


Bond IV: Sonata

by LittleRedPencil



Series: Bond [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam (Voltron) Lives, Altean Lance (Voltron), Established Adam/Shiro (Voltron), F/F, F/M, Galra Keith (Voltron), M/M, Multi, Paladin Adam (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 316,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21554254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedPencil/pseuds/LittleRedPencil
Summary: While Adam and Keith are trying to unravel inconsistencies in Adam's past, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge are tasked with trying to hold together a Galaxy Garrison that's falling apart from the inside. Shiro has to trust that the Paladins can handle the threats on Earth, while he, Allura, and Lotor attempt to save a dying Colony Two before power hungry Galra factions destroy the Altean people for good. On top of the internal threats faced by both teams, Honerva has decided she's ready to get personally involved.Having stayed on the sidelines and hidden their existence until now, the Guardians, Reapers, and Sentinels that have been using the Paladin ships as their avatars realize that the only way to save the universes is to meet Honerva with powerful alchemy, druidism, and shamanism of their own.
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Allura/Lotor (Voltron), Curtis/Kuron (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: Bond [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1194147
Comments: 162
Kudos: 250





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING - Cancer/Illness (No deaths resulting) - Currently the 3 short references are marked with [ [ T W ] ] tags. All future mentions will use this tag. Skipping the sections marked by this tag will NOT detract from the overall story.

“This is going to be bad,” Yellow murmured shifting down to smaller form that was more manageable at long distance. “We never have these meetings if there’s anything good going on. Nobody ever calls a meeting, then when we get there says “we harvested way too many sweetfruit this season and now you’re getting a bucketful for free.” 

Green lifted her billowing silky skirts, her emerald crystal heels clicking lightly on the white marble floors as she walked the narrow hallway at Yellow’s side. Even in what some would consider more practical attire, he was still clanking around loudly in the glittering mail that hugged his muscular form. It was like he couldn’t walk a straight line while he was nervous, probably because he had a tendency to wave his hands about frantically, which undoubtedly shifted his center of gravity and helped give him the serpentine meander that nearly knocked her into the wall twice.

“It’s just a meeting,” she said soothingly, throwing her long, mossy ringlets over her shoulder to reach up and rub his arm. “We have meetings all the time. White’s going very far away for a bit, it’s probably just an update.”

“Of course it’s an update,” Yellow sighed. “But you and I both know there’s nothing good to update. Not with that…thing out there.”

That thing. Green shuddered slightly at the memory of the fight on Colony One, of the way all of space around the planet seemed to bend in on itself and freeze while Honerva was present. Whatever it was that had latched onto her, it was huge even by Guardian standards. Yellow was right, as long as that thing was ravaging the universe, there probably wasn’t anything good to update.

“Maybe he’s marrying Blue,” Green tried to be optimistic. Yellow stopped in his gesticulating just long enough to scoff and roll his eyes at her.

“Blue would eat him alive.”

“Well…maybe he’s into that, I don’t know.”

“Okay, your method of changing the subject is really not making this better,” Yellow informed her as they reached the end of the hall and stopped at the ornate white door.

He took a deep breath, and she smoothed her skirts. Green had never been invited into the astral plane of a White before, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to act. Was she supposed to curtsy when she was acknowledged? Was there a particular greeting to be used? These forms they wore were far more formal than their natural shapes, and she had never had to use it in the quintessence field. There had never been any reason for her to learn the proper etiquette for addressing a White.

“Let’s just try to remember he’s Red’s brother,” Yellow whispered.

“That doesn’t make it much better, Red likes to be difficult for fun,” Green whispered back. 

“How long are we going to stand outside the door?” Blue whispered loudly between them.

Yellow and Green both screamed at her sudden appearance. Blue caught them before they toppled over, and a second later the door was yanked open. Red stood on the other side, eyes wide, and White was visible several yards back in the great cathedral of trees.

“What’s going on?” Red asked, her sword halfway out. “What happened?”

“I have no idea,” Blue answered as Green fully righted herself and smoothed her dress. “They were standing there whispering when I caught up to them, I guess I interrupted a romantic moment.”

Green felt her face grow hot. She mumbled something unintelligible even to herself and scurried into the room, Red stepping out of her way as she passed. Behind her, Red put her sword away and she heard the others follow her in.

White’s astral plane was impressive. The beautiful hall, glowing white, with a lovely statue of the goddess at the far end…very regal.

“Shut the door before those stupid Sentinels end up following you in,” White called. He was across the room at a circle of throne-like chairs, draped across one sideways, arm across his eyes in a very dramatic fashion. “I can’t take that kind of stress on top of everything else.”

“Did you make it to the Hydra Galaxy?” Blue skipped past Green, completely ignoring the absolute horror of what she was doing as she threw White’s legs off of his chair to force him to sit up, then squished herself in next to him. “Is that evil witch there? Are you going to war?”

“We’ve just come out of the final jump, yes, we’re in the Hydra Galaxy,” White answered, wincing slightly as he was squashed but otherwise doing nothing to defend himself from her onslaught. “I don’t believe she’s here yet, and I imagine their plan is sound. She’s not going to find us for a handful of days at least.”

Green was thankful to see colored jewels at the tops of the chairs, making it unnecessary for her to try and figure out where to sit. She lowered herself into the chair marked with an emerald as Yellow took the citrine chair to her left. Across from her, Red settled in under the ruby, while the sapphire chair remained empty thanks to Blue’s hijinks.

The door opened once more, drawing her attention to the quiet form entering almost like a ghost. Black closed the door behind him and moved soundlessly across the floor in his highly decorated robe. He took his black diamond seat without a word, folding his hands in his lap.

“So what is this about?” Red asked bluntly, clearly in no mood to be hanging around with her sibling. “We have some issues of our own to deal with right now.”

“Yes, you do,” White agreed. “There’s a second Reaper in your midst.”

Green sat up straighter. Reapers were notoriously hard to identify if they wanted to hide, but this Gold they had in containment was fairly blatant once he’d been discovered. The fact that there was a second one was very problematic indeed, they were far too distant from any rift holes for one to have gotten here easily.

“Oh!” Blue looked shocked. “Who’s carrying it? No, don’t tell me! That James boy, right? The one who was Lance the day he picked up his? Or Romelle! She was at that base. Oh! No! It’s Acxa! Didn’t they say she went into the field too?”

“It’s the clone,” Black finally spoke up irritably, rubbing his temple. 

White looked slightly annoyed, but Green wasn’t sure if it was because Black had possibly guessed correctly or because he had interrupted Blue. Everyone looked at Black, who let his hand fall away and glanced around when he realized he was being stared at.

“Am I the only one who pays attention?” Black asked. “The clone is known to go places he shouldn’t be, and I’ve picked him up down in that containment lab more than once. Probably talking to the Gold.”

“Yes, it’s the clone,” White confirmed. “But it’s worse than that. She’s not hitching a ride in Kuro, she is Kuro. He’s bonded.”

“How do you know?” Red asked. “I somehow doubt he sent you a notarized letter just to keep you informed.”

“It came up when he was alone with Shiro the other day,” White answered. “He was time-pulling to fix Shiro’s broken nose. But when I tried to confront him he…not-so-politely declined.”

White rubbed the side of his face lightly, as if remembering being struck. From what Green knew of Kuro, White being hit was definitely not outside the realm of possibility.

“Why didn’t you tell us as soon as you found out?” Yellow asked. “It’s been two days since then, he could be dangerous.”

“Because he was going to be coming with us, and then running off to not be in the way,” White answered. “But even before the ships made the first jump, I didn’t sense him. I think he’s still on Earth.”

Green frowned and closed her eyes, reaching out through her Lion’s computer system. She tapped into the Garrison one, running through the security logs and camera footage of the Lorelia. She spotted it barely thirty seconds before the ship took off, the docking bay door opening and an Altean letting Kuro out before launch.

“Yes, he’s still here,” she confirmed, opening her eyes. “One more thing to watch out for.”

“He’s probably not a problem,” Blue piped up. “If he was going to do something bad, he would have done it by now, right? He’s been on Earth for two phoebs already, and nothing’s happened.”

“Blue, you trust everyone,” Red answered, shaking her head. “No, he hasn’t done anything…yet. But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to. Let’s add that to our list of things to worry about, along with the fact that Black can’t contact Keith.”

“He’s still blocked?” White asked. Black only nodded. “That’s very inconvenient. But it really hasn’t been all that long, so maybe it’s not time to panic yet. Just keep trying, you need to sync up with him again.”

“He can still pilot,” Black answered. “If I have to, I’ll pick up the slack on merging the lions. Now that Blue has her pilot back it should work even if Keith is just there in the seat.”

“No, you don’t understand,” White answered grimly, carefully maneuvering out from under Blue so he could stand. “You need to sync back up with him.”

White looked so somber, and it made Green shift uncomfortably. Especially when he looked around at all of them, making sure he made eye contact with each.

“You’ve seen what controls Honerva,” White said. “You know nothing from this universe can fight whatever that is.”

Green looked over at Yellow, then over at Black. Both exchanged looks with her and the others as they all began to sense that maybe Yellow was right and this meeting was not about anything good.

“Yes,” Red said carefully. “We’re aware. That’s why we’ve worked so hard to find our original pilots, the potential of these ships can’t be unlocked if we have to keep starting over with new ones.”

“No, I don’t mean ships,” White said flatly. “Your ships will do nothing against this. As long as you’re contained in your ships, so are your full abilities. Somebody needs to go up against Honerva, full throttle.”

“But we can’t do that here,” Yellow stated the obvious. “We’re kind of limited as long as we’re on this plane. We could somehow bait her into the quintessence field and try to attack her there.”

“Nope, no can do,” Blue said. “Whatever’s controlling her is from the quintessence field too, you can feel it. That means if we lure her there, she’s just going to be stronger there too.”

“No, you have to fight her here, in this universe,” White agreed. “But you have to be stronger to do that, and the only way to be stronger is if you don’t have to hide in the ships to survive.”

“You’re talking about bonding to our pilots.”

Black spoke up again, a frown creasing his face. Green looked at him, then back at White, feeling her eyes widen as she realized he was right.

“We can’t do that,” Green sputtered.

“If we do, we’ll never be able to go back home!” Yellow exclaimed.

“We’ll also lose a good chunk of our power in the change anyway,” Blue added. “Not to mention we could be killed!”

“You’ll come back,” White answered with a slight shrug. “It may take a while, and I hear reliving mortal infancy is hell, but you’ll be bound to a mortal core so you’ll eventually find a new mortal body.”

“Uh, yeah, after that part where we’d get killed first,” Red interjected. “No way. That’s giving up too much.”

“Nobody else is going to do it,” White replied. “She’s going to keep going, unchecked. Have you seen some of the destruction that’s followed in her wake?”

“The outpost,” Black murmured. “The entire planet was burning, but I could feel that it was just a shell. Its whole inner core, it was gone. There were places in space that we flew through, where Keith and Shiro couldn’t tell because they lack the senses, but there were pockets of nothing. You could feel it so strongly even they were struck by the sadness. She’s not just destroying things, she’s making them cease to exist.”

“By sucking the quintessence out of them,” White acknowledged. “At least Reapers only feed on dead universes and leave a clean space where a new one can start. This thing is just eating holes in everything. And I promise you, if what they think she’s doing is correct—if she’s making bodies to put Formless in and let them loose here in the universe—she’s not going to stop here. Other universes will be next, and she’ll keep going as long as no Guardians care enough to go see what’s going on. By the time she decides to destroy our people, there will be nowhere left for them to flee to.”

“There will be no home to go to, if she isn’t stopped,” Black agreed. “But the cost of what you’re suggesting is very high, that’s why nobody does it. Not just to us, but to our Paladins. If we’re being perfectly honest, we waited ten thousand years for them for very selfish reasons. Bonds were formed, we care for them deeply. 

“What you’re asking now is for us to curse them. To reach a point in their lives where they stop aging, stop changing, and have to watch everyone around them die. To open their minds to the infinite consciousness of a Guardian…we say it must be terrible to be mortal and to understand one’s own mortality, but to gift them with the true, larger scale picture? To let them see that things live and die simply because it’s a cycle, that everything ends and is rebuilt over and in the long run doesn’t matter? Can you imagine if you were suddenly elevated to a higher plane of existence only to learn that everything you loved was utterly pointless in the grand scheme of things?”

“Are you trying to tell me you think it’s better for all of them—and us—to be completely destroyed in the coming apocalypse than to sacrifice the chance to go home?” White asked, looking around. “Would you really rather kill them than make them sad for a few thousand years? Or are you afraid of the fact that if the bonding is successful, you and they will be one, and so you’ll be sad for a few thousand years?”

Green looked down at her hands, not wanting White to catch her gaze. What he was suggesting was not something to be done lightly. It wasn’t even something to be discussed lightly, and she was very uncomfortable with the idea.

Nobody else said anything, and she knew they were all thinking the same thing. But rather than being sympathetic, White let out a sound of disgust.

“You all do what you have to do,” he said finally. “And when you finally take your cowardly tails home, I’m sure telling everyone there that you’re sorry will work wonders when they’re burning.”

White snapped his fingers, and then Green was no longer sitting in the elaborate marble chair. She found herself in a familiar bed of clover, the hushed silence of his cathedral halls replaced by the singing of jeweled birds. Undoubtedly, everyone else had been very suddenly returned to their own astral planes as well.

It was a testament to White’s power that he could banish five fully grown Guardians with such ease, and that made Green very nervous.

Because White was scared, she had definitely picked up on that today. And if someone so powerful was so scared, Green could only imagine the kind of dark power they were going to be up against.


	2. Chapter 2

The Atlas passed out of the blinding light of the final wormhole, dropping unceremoniously into the gaping black emptiness of space. Shiro checked the ship’s sensors, to see if the ongoing scans had picked up any enemies in the area, then he checked again. They were off, picking up strange vibrations that undulated through the entire system they were approaching.

“Lotor, something’s up,” he called into the other ship. “There’s something in this system messing with our readings.”

“Beyond this system is a binary black hole pair,” Lotor replied over the comm. “This solar system is in no danger of being destroyed, but the binary gives off waves of what we’ve begun referring to as a “quantum tide.” I believe the fluctuations it causes in the quintessence here are what helped the development of such rich veins of psyferite, but the side effect is a faint time shift. We’re now entering space where time is passing a little shy of twice as fast as the outside. One Earth day will be almost two here.”

“Great,” Shiro frowned, glancing around his own bridge. He had not taken any kind of time dilation into account. “You could have told us.”

“I did not want anyone believing we had extra time here and growing complacent.”

Shiro knew it wasn’t meant as an insult, but he bristled anyway. He and his people did not need to be told that time was of the essence, they knew what kind of threat they were up against. Lotor seemed to sense the tension in his silence.

“I also did not want anyone to force this mission to begin before you were all ready,” Lotor added. “Which you most certainly would have done upon realizing this colony has been suffering for eight decaphoebs instead of four.”

Shiro glanced over at Allura, who was stepping away from the teludav controls with a dawning look of horror on her face. Lotor was right, had they understood just how long this colony had been in need of aid they would have rushed everything.

He tamped down his ire and changed the subject, before he let the stress of the last few days get to him and said something he didn’t mean to.

“Did Ryou’s ship make it out all right after the second jump?” Shiro asked, hitting a few buttons a little too hard.

“No,” Lotor answered. “Apparently he never made here. I was waiting for the Lorelia down in the docking bay to escort him to a striker only to learn from the runner crew that he abandoned ship just before takeoff. He’s still on Earth.”

There was a brief wash of relief, a small portion of the tension Shiro was holding in beginning to lessen. Ryou hadn’t left, he was still on Earth. He had also technically bailed out on coming to Colony Two, but the reality was that he was a civilian and was safer staying back. The important thing was that he was, in fact, still there.

“Did they say why he stayed?” Shiro asked. Lotor snorted softly.

“Is there any question of why he stayed? Regardless of the circumstances of his birth, Earth is his native planet. He’s human, he requires other humans. Undoubtedly, your incessant campaign to emotionally compromise his departure was successful.”

Shiro glanced around the bridge and noted that he wasn’t the only one who looked pleased. The others had become fond of Ryou in their own way, and with all the bad news coming at them it was at least nice to know they weren’t losing one of their own.

In Shiro’s case, it wasn’t simply that Ryou wasn’t leaving. It was that somebody healthy, who he trusted to look out for Adam and Keith, was still on Earth. Someone Curtis was going to confide in, who would have all the information necessary to make sure they stayed safe.

And that took a huge weight off Shiro’s shoulders. He turned back to the task at hand, feeling a little more energized.

“The cruiser is transmitting coordinates for the colony,” he pointed out. “Get me the details on this planet.”

The information streamed across Nikolaev’s screen, and he quickly did as asked to get a fix on their final destination and get a display on the main viewscreen.

“The system’s star is a red dwarf,” Nikolaev announced, verifying information that Lotor had already provided. “The planet is in the outer edge of the Circumstellar Habitable Zone, but solar activity’s wiped away the atmosphere. I don’t know how anybody could be alive on this planet.”

“Liquid water?” Shiro asked, studying what he was seeing on his console now that he had a live subject and not just an ally’s descriptions. “Vegetation?”

“Water? Yes,” Nikolaev answered. “Liquid? No. There’s a hell of a lot of water locked in ice, but anything that was liquid was probably lost a long time ago. No vegetation, the surface is clean. Definite signs of past volcanic activity, but no live volcanoes anymore. Tectonic plates and at least a molten layer at the core, we’ve definitely got some mountain ridges. But it looks like solar activity has been blasting away mass, there’s nothing nearly as high here as on Earth.”

“So we’re looking at something similar to Mercury,” Shiro deduced. “What’s survivability look like?”

“Temperature zones look very similar to Earth’s, or would if they had anything to hold in heat from the sun,” Nikolaev answered. “Planet has a similar tilt, so probably the same seasons. Our landing coordinates would put us in the middle of springtime in Dublin at home, but here I’m looking temps a little lower than freezing. And you’re going to need an oxygen supply.”

“Lotor intends to build support rings,” Allura said as she approached Shiro’s console. “Using some of the planet’s psyferite deposits. Back on Altea, those rings were docking stations for intergalactic trade…it cut down on fuel needed to launch and land. A similar design could be used here to create an artificial shield against the star’s activity, and keep any atmosphere created by the terraforming intact.”

“There’s enough ore on this planet to recreate Altea’s docking rings?” Shiro asked in surprise.

“There is enough ore on this planet to recreate the rings and build a very modern capital city,” Lotor replied. “This planet can be a new cradle for Altean civilization, once it has a proper power source.”

Shiro glanced over at Allura again, but she was looking down at the console. He could see the pain on her face and his heart went out to her; she knew the predicament these people were in stemmed from the Paladins’ fight with Lotor, that the Sincline and rift gate had been their last real hope, and she was ready to face them and take their blame.

Blame that Shiro couldn’t help but feel like he shared. If he had been stronger, if he had been a better leader, if he had tried harder to understand the Black Lion, Zarkon’s lich never would have been able to cause the quintessence feedback that had ultimately cost him his life. He would have been there, he might have been more of a voice of reason. Hell, if he had been there instead of a clone, the fight probably never would have left the bridge of the Castle of Lions.

But he hadn’t been there. It had been just one more in a seemingly endless string of his failures, and he was only alive today by the grace of the Black Lion and Allura’s incredible skill.

“Hey,” he said softly, nudging her lightly with his elbow. “It’ll be okay. We’ll fix this.”

She nodded, trying to dredge up a smile and failing. Shiro didn’t push her.

“Nikolaev, anything else we should know about this system?”

“Um…well, there are two other planets in the habitable zone. Both also rocky, both without atmospheres. Then we’ve got two gas giants and what looks like a snowball body,” Nikolaev read off his scans. “Nothing alive on any of them, but if we’re not careful they can definitely shield incoming enemy ships.”

“Launch probes to the three outer planets,” Shiro ordered. “Send them by MFE.”

He turned his attention to the scan readouts and began sending orders down to the medical bay and disaster response teams in preparation for landing. Three MFEs launched in the meantime to deliver probes into the orbits of the three outer planets, a process that took about forty minutes at their updated max speed. Once everyone was back on board, the Atlas rejoined the Galra cruiser as it slowly began its descent.

There was very little turbulence as the Atlas followed suit. The surface of the planet was clearly visible as they approached, and with no atmosphere there wasn’t much friction. The only noticeable change in readings were in the level of gravity the ship was dealing with.

Down below, the scene was barren and rocky plain interrupted on occasion by a protruding vein of what would be mountain range on earth. The scans Shiro was looking at told him that there had indeed been volcanic activity; advanced sonar analysis came back with fairly solid hints that there were networks of lava tubes under the planet’s surface.

But the most blatant trait the planet had to offer was the low, silvery spire that came into view as the ship sank lower. The colony was not what Shiro had envisioned, even with Lotor’s admittedly vague descriptions. It was circular, a hub with spoke-like hallways running out of it to a thick outer ring like a wheel. The spaces within the spokes were not empty, but it wasn’t until they were just about ready to land that he figured out what he was looking at.

Crops, or at least the remains. There was soil here, the rocky earth that the Alteans had been manually terraforming bit by bit had started within the colony walls with their own fields of food plants, but instead of large swathes of green there were only blackened stems and patches of frost.

“Everything’s dead,” Nikolaev murmured.

“Yes.” Shiro had almost forgotten that Lotor was still linked up to the Atlas. “Bandor brought news of the outer generators failing six decaphoebs ago. Half of the colony and all of the outside space has been abandoned since then, the colonists stay only in the portions they’re able to power with the solar generators they have.”

Now Shiro could see more clearly, large portions of the outer wheel had been abandoned mid-build. There were more patches of soil outside the colony, but they had also been abandoned and left to become fields of frost. And the farthest section of the colony building had fallen entirely, sunken into a length of a lava tube that had collapsed beneath it.

“Is anybody even still here?” Colleen asked, shaking off her shock at the state of the place.

“Lotor’s been broadcasting a message letting everyone know it’s a friendly approach,” Nikolaev answered, glancing up from his console. “But I’m guessing for safety’s sake nobody is going to come out until they’re sure.”

“Or they’ll send out representatives,” Shiro answered, nodding toward the viewscreen. “Look.”

Four people were approaching, but Shiro couldn’t pick out anything about them thanks to the full space suits and masks they wore. They had come out of the main entrance of the colony and were heading toward the landing pad, but as they got closer they slowed. It didn’t take a genius to know they weren’t going to approach the strange ships without reassurance.

“All right,” Shiro announced, grabbing the helmet from where it sat next to his console. He and Lotor had already discussed what was going to happen when they got here, and he was already in his flight suit. “Time to roll, Allura. Veronica, have James meet us in the air lock.”

Allura was already in her armor. She fell into step beside him as they left the bridge, and he could practically feel the air growing thick with anxiety. She said nothing, but her discomfort was obvious. He summoned the lift and let her step in first, saying nothing as they began the trip down to the docking bay, knowing that he had no words that could help what she was about to face. He took her hand as they descended, giving a reassuring squeeze and feeling the pressure of her anxious grip in return.

No matter what happened here today, whether the colonists forgave her mistake or not, Shiro had Allura’s back.

James was waiting for them, armed and ready, and the other pilots were at the MFEs and ready to go. Not because Shiro expected any danger from the colony itself, but because now that they were away from Earth there was no telling when Honerva might appear.

The three of them disembarked and met a group of four coming from the cruiser. Lotor and Acxa were accompanied by Hira and Camille. Allura and Shiro fell into step with Lotor, and they approached the group waiting for them at the edge of the landing pad.

“Ziran, Sachelle,” Lotor greeted the two in front by name as they came close enough to see them through their face plates. Ziran was a younger man, probably in his mid-twenties, and Sachelle was a middle-aged woman, at whatever age Alteans considered middle. “Bandor reached me with news of the problems here. Call a meeting, we need to rectify everything we can as quickly as possible.”

He started to continue forward, but Ziran stepped forward and blocked his way with a staff he was carrying.

“I’m sorry, Prince Lotor, but we can’t allow you or any of these visitors entry,” he said hollowly. “Half of the colony is under quarantine, and we can’t guarantee the rest is clean.”

“Quarantine?” Hira repeated, looking past him to the dead, quiet colony. “For what? What’s happening?”

“We haven’t been able to venture far, but we’ve been bringing back samples from places we’ve reached,” Sachelle answered. “Rock, dirt, ice. Everything’s been kept frozen until it can be scanned and studied, but there was a power loss last phoeb in the storage compartments of the research labs. Everything thawed, and something was released into the air.

“It’s very serious. It strikes quickly and symptoms are severe…death comes within thirteen quintants of the first signs. We still don’t even know how it’s transmitted, or how many are truly infected.”

“How many have been lost?” Lotor sounded shocked, as if this was one of the very few scenarios he had not foreseen and prepared for. And why would he? This was a dead planet when he’d arrived. “How many are sick?”

“Twenty-three deaths today,” Sachelle said, lowering her head. “A little over three-hundred total, starting two movements ago. If the numbers hold, we expect about ten more before the end of the quintant.”

“And you can’t heal it,” Acxa said it rather than asking.

“No. If we knew more about it, if we had more time…maybe.”

An average of thirty deaths per day, on a colony of less than two thousand people. Shiro looked over at Allura and could see that she understood the precariousness of the situation. They were looking at a full wipe out of the colony if this wasn’t contained.

“The Atlas medical crew are fully trained in dealing with unknown pathogens,” Shiro offered without waiting to be asked. Silently, he thanked Adam for being so forceful about making him leave; these people needed even more help than he had originally believed. “We don’t have the space to treat a full population of potentially exposed patients, but we can convert the colony. I see you have solar panels, what do they power?”

“Just the life support systems,” a younger woman who was standing behind Sachelle piped up. “They’ve taken a lot of damage in solar storms and are dying faster than we can fix them, at this point they only power the oxygen scrubbers and water recyclers.”

“And the terraformer modules?” Lotor asked, looking up at the sky. “Bandor tells me they were shut down four decaphoebs ago. Are they completely dry?”

“Yes,” Ziran nodded slightly. “I was trying to get them to at least work at low rates on manual alchemy, but they’re designed for the concentrated quintessence you were shipping us. When those shipments stopped coming, we eventually had to shut them down. By that point we’d managed to install a little more than a dozen modules and a partial membrane shield. If we can get them running again, they can at least provide about half of this decaquadrant with a thin, breathable atmosphere.”

“Then we need to get power to those modules,” Lotor frowned. “And to the colony, if the Atlas crew is going to turn it into a field hospital. We can unload the balmera crystal from the cruiser, that might help.”

“No, with the Atlas down we’ll need the cruiser for potential air support in case of an attack,” Shiro disagreed. “There are still three balmera crystals in storage, we can use two of those to temporarily power the colony. How long until the modules make a difference if we power those with the third?”

“Three movements?” Ziran guessed. It was clear that he was the engineer of this group. Shiro guessed Sachelle was some kind of medical professional. “Maybe four.”

“That’s too long,” Shiro frowned. “We need something stronger.”

He looked over to Allura, and could see she understood what he meant. Slowly, she nodded.

“The Atlas won’t fly without three balmera crystals,” she answered. “And it definitely won’t have defensive capabilities. But it can run as a field base on only one, and I believe it can even run a particle barrier for defense if necessary.”

“Good,” Shiro nodded then stepped forward to offer his hand first to Sachelle, then Ziran, then the two standing behind them. “I’m Takashi Shirogane, Captain of the Atlas. We represent allies from the planet Earth, we’re here with supplies and people to help. The first thing we’re going to do is get two balmera crystals hooked up to this base to get your power running again, but my engineers are going to need direction from you.”

“I’ll tell the others to get the engine room ready,” the younger woman offered, already backing away. “And send out some workers to help with the transfer!”

She took off running, well aware that every tick that passed was time lost. Shiro turned to Ziran.

“Once power is up, we’re going to remove the Atlas’ primary power source and shift the ship to secondary,” he said. “We have a crystal…it’s compact and easily mobile. It’s incredibly concentrated, with some luck we can get those modules working within days rather than weeks. Quintants, I mean…quintants rather than movements.”

“All of this will help our medics coming and going from the ship to the base,” Allura told Sachelle. “We have new equipment, fresh medicine, clean water…the humans are experienced in preventing pandemics, these resources can hopefully stall the advance of the disease.”

“You’re Altean,” Sachelle finally got a good look at Allura through the helmets, the surprise clear in her voice. “I don’t recognize you. Were you on Colony One? No, your hair color is very distinctive, I’d remember you.”

“Yes, Allura is Altean,” Lotor interrupted before Allura could respond. “But the details of her origins will wait until this colony is no longer in tatters. She and Captain Shirogane are allies, and very powerful ones. That’s all that you need to know for now.”

None of the three Alteans facing them showed any signs of insult at being brushed off. If anything they quickly lost interest in Allura, knowing full well where their attention needed to be. If Lotor told them the new arrivals were okay, then they were okay.

“Sachelle, Acxa, would you both come with me, please?” Shiro requested, backing away from the others, toward the Atlas. “James, show Ziran to Engineering, let Dr. Holt know to prep two balmera crystals for transfer and to change over the power. Allura, head to the bridge and bring down the Zero crystal once the power is switched over.”

“Certainly,” Allura nodded, her and Acxa hurrying to catch up with him and Sachelle as Shiro broke into a jog and urged them all on. “Where are you going?”

“To the medical bay,” Shiro answered as they bound up the loading ramp and flew past a handful of confused looking soldiers who were preparing to begin the relief effort “There’s a reason I was chosen to be on the Kerberos mission, and it wasn’t just because I was a good pilot.”

He let Sachelle and Acxa into the elevator first, following in after Allura and apologizing as they shoved two more soldiers to the back and put in the officer’s override code to ignore their destinations and go straight to the med bay.

“I’m a microbiologist,” Shiro said as the elevator doors slid closed and they began their quick ascent. “I study bacteria and viruses.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“This place was lucky,” Adam muttered, holding the old wooden door of the small bed and breakfast open to allow Kailey to step out first. Keith followed behind him, stretching and breathing deeply in the warm morning air. Conway—unsurprisingly—had run off at some point in the night and was no longer their problem.

The stretch of road outside of Iquitos was abandoned, but not destroyed. The Galra fleets had fired on the cities, but vaporizing the entire surface of the planet would have been useless to them. There were huge expanses of land that were untouched, only empty because humans had fled during the occupation then hadn’t had a surviving population large enough to re-inhabit them.

There was a single gas station, at the truck stop, and it had only been rebuilt because of the sheer necessity of trucks to keep goods flowing. Functioning gas stations had not been extremely common before the occupation, advances in electric engines had made sure of that, but in the aftermath of destroyed power grids, even the way humans transported themselves had to be adjusted back to the less advanced methods of previous generations.

Cars were gas/electric hybrids, they were all built that way. And so many cars had been abandoned, just sitting in driveways and parking lots, that renting one wasn’t necessary. Adam and Keith had spent their evening after renting a room picking out a vehicle and raiding an abandoned garage for tools to get it up and running again.

Like Takashi, Keith was useless when it came to mechanics. He knew the names of absolutely nothing, and he called the different tools by what he thought they resembled. He didn’t know how to change the tires, change the oil, replace the battery, or drain the expired gas already in the tank. Adam had spent half of the night doing the fixing, but in return for being extremely unhelpful Keith had to walk back to the truck station to get a few gallons of gas.

In the end they’d gotten their commandeered car fixed and running, and now they stood on the otherwise empty street. There were sounds of life in the distance, of the local residents milling about or heading to the little nearby “town square” to buy, sell, and trade.

“There are a lot of places like this,” Keith said, raising a hand to block the morning sun from his eyes. “Still standing, people starting to come back. Most of them still don’t have power, but water and plumbing are working in a lot of cases. It’s back to candles and going outside…lands that time forgot.”

“Oh, how terrible it must be to live without a phone in your face,” Adam lamented, rolling his eyes. It went unnoticed behind his darkened glasses. “Can you imagine having to talk to people? Ugh.”

“Feel free to stop at any time,” Keith rolled his own eyes as he headed for the car, holding out his hand for the keys. “I want to drive.”

“Absofuckinglutely not,” Adam snorted, holding the keys close to his chest. “I didn’t put in all that work to _not_ haul ass on the open rode at over 100 miles per hour with no cops around to stop me. And Kailey gets shotgun. You sit in the back, Junior.”

Keith made a face, but slinked toward the back door of the car. He paused, frowning, and pulled something small from where it was settled deep within his pocket.

“Well damn,” he commented, holding the tiny item up. Adam recognized it as the tracker Lance had shown him back during their time on the Lorelia, or at least one similar to it. “He’s using my own tricks against me.”

“Better keep that,” Adam advised. “You never know when it might come in handy.”

Keith nodded and switched it off, putting it back in his pocket. Adam headed for the driver side of the car but stopped after a few steps, tilting his head to the side to listen. Keith, he saw, was doing the same.

There were vehicles approaching. More than one, and after a moment of waiting he could see the three dark SUVs come over the hill toward them.

“Well those look shiny and well-maintained,” Keith commented, leaning on the top of their own vehicle. “Nice, tinted windows. On a scale of one to ten, how likely do you think they are to shoot us?”

“Eight that they’ll try, zero that they’ll hit,” Adam answered, eyeing the SUVs. They had most of the markings removed, and sat heavier than most cars or trucks would have. Adam could see the other hints that these vehicles were bulletproof, and pegged them as being military. “Kailey, get in the car.”

He tossed her the keys and motioned to the driver’s seat, keeping his eyes on the approaching vehicles even as he opened the door for her. He quickly pulled out his wallet, taking out one of the credit cards and handing it in to her.

“If anything goes down, hit the gas and go,” he warned, sliding the wallet back into his pocket. “Get to the truck stop, fill the tank, and head to Iquitos as fast as you can. Don’t look back.”

“You can’t be serious,” Kailey groaned, sinking down a bit in the seat to try and look smaller. “Oh, God, do you really think they’ll shoot at us?”

Instead of answering, Adam shut the car door. He stepped away, out into the street, and Keith followed suit. They moved a good distance from the car then stopped to wait, arms crossed and feet tapping. He and Keith both had their guns if necessary, but aside from that they were both very fast. The key in any fight was for them to get close, because once they were within arm’s reach it was over.

There were three SUVs, and all three pulled to the side just before reaching them. They parked in front of an old, darkened dress shop, it’s windows long since broken in looting and most of its contents gone. For a moment nothing happened, then finally doors began opening and people began getting out.

“Could these people be any more stereotypical drug gang?” Keith muttered, causing Adam to snort softly.

The kid had a point. They were all dressed in black, all had dark sunglasses, and were all visibly carrying guns at their hips. Three out of the six even had rifles slung across their backs, and heaven only knew what else was in those cars. At the very least, Adam could pick out two more people still sitting inside one of them.

“Mr. Kogane, Mr. Wolfe,” one of the new arrivals, an absolute bear of a man, greeted them in a thick Spanish accent. “You look exactly like your pictures.”

“Really?” Adam asked, looking the group over. “And I was always told the camera adds ten pounds.”

“I think he’s saying you look fat,” Keith answered. Like Adam, his stance was relaxed but he was carefully taking in everyone in front of him and mentally taking stock of the threat. “He’s not completely wrong, but it’s still kind of rude.”

“Neither of you know how to shop, and Takashi burned spaghetti last week because he walked away and forgot it was boiling,” Adam retaliated. “I’ve been living off take-out since I woke up.”

He gave a wave of dismissal, ever so faintly using the gesture to indicate that if they had to rush this group, Keith should cross him and go to the left. Keith subtly shifted his weight in response, turning himself slightly in that direction.

“You’re both very cute,” the man replied to their banter with a borderline indifference, pulling the dark sunglasses off his face and walking toward them. He stopped a few feet away, polishing the glasses on his shirt and unperturbed at being so close to people who could gut him on their way past without slowing down. “Given that two representatives of your giant robot whatever-the-fuck club have conveniently made a stop here, Axel Russo is extending an invitation for a nice little chat about the bullshit you all are spreading in the news.”

“Wow, and I thought the people who crashed into me then tried to murder me in an alley were the invitation,” Keith shot back. “Or maybe the bombs that were set up at Garrison bases around the world.”

“I do have a few reservations about getting into cars with strangers,” Adam agreed. “Especially ones who apparently have such a pretty anti-alien sentiment.”

The man scoffed, sliding the sunglasses back on his face. He slid his hands in his pockets and planted his feet, calling back over his shoulder.

“Hey Deek! Martek! The two court jesters think we have “anti-alien sentiment.”

“Well, Jackass McGee over here still keeps smoking even though we keep telling him it stinks,” one of the men still in the car slid the side door open further, revealing a Galra with a headset partially over one ear and a portable computer console on his lap. He gestured to one of the human men, who was indeed leaning up against the vehicle with a cigarette in his lips. “And you keep making the food too spicy.”

The other person clambered out over him. She was another Galra, younger, but just as no-nonsense as the man who was speaking as she marched over to them with a tablet.

“Hey Desi, you might want to wrap this up real fast,” she warned. “I’m getting readings from four different scanners in the area, and they’re closing in. At least two different frequencies.”

The Galra were speaking Spanish, which was the second metaphorical punch in the face Adam experienced, the first being that there were two Galra here dressed like thugs getting ready to shake down shop owners for protection money. A glance at Keith said he was just as surprised, but at least he had his translator in to understand what was being said. Even if neither of them understood what was going on.

Desi saw the looks on their faces and smirked slightly as he took the offered tablet.

“Yeah, Deek and Martek aren’t our only Galra defectors,” he said. “Turns out, Galra are the same as everybody else. If the people in charge of them are raging assholes and you offer them a better deal, they jump ship real fast.”

He looked at the tablet, then glanced around the empty street they were on. Unlike up in the US, the buildings here were all single-story and gave everything a much more wide-open field.

“You know those signals are THEMIS, right?” Adam asked. The slight twitch of Desi’s eye told him that yes, this man knew about this special forces group and had probably even tangled with them once or twice.

“Us being here is basically just a trap for your boss,” Keith pointed out. “If I were you, I really wouldn’t hang around waiting for them to get here.”

“And if I were you, I’d accept Mr. Russo’s invitation,” Desi returned. “I’m not still alive by dumb luck, Kogane. I know you were dumped here as a Ghost trap and so does Russo. But we also know THEMIS grunts have been knocking off each other’s contacts and assets since the occupation ended, so we are politely offering to remove you from what’s going to become a very dangerous situation.”

“How dangerous?” Adam asked. Desi knew far more than he had expected, and he was beginning to get a sick feeling that Simon’s entreaties for him not to get on the plane had reasons that were far more complicated than he’d had time to go into on the phone. “We’re not informants or THEMIS assets, we shouldn’t be Ghost targets. Bait, sure, but not targets.”

“I’m just a messenger boy,” Desi answered, shrugging lazily. “It’s not my job to know or explain details.”

“Three civilian women, four civilian men, and two civilian children have been killed the last week in Peru alone,” Deek matter-of-factly filled in the information Adam was sure Desi knew but didn’t feel like sharing. “These special forces soldiers have abandoned the idea of taking out targets with surgical precision and instead spray gunfire and let the mass casualties be blamed on gang violence. One faction has dropped you out here as bait for Russo. Another will undoubtedly use that move to outright kill you in order to move their own candidates into position to claim the pilot seats.”

“Full offense, but I’m not exactly jumping to trust somebody who’s only on this planet because they followed Sendak in an invasion,” Keith said coldly.

“Says the man who disappeared for four years after your stupid alliance made so many Blade names and faces public,” Deek answered back with just as much ice. “Thanks for making it so much easier for the empire to kill off the only protection its citizens had. But I’m sure my dead brother would be fine with being executed for draft dodging if he only knew that the people who could’ve helped him had to fuck off to back you all up and make you look cool.”

“Deek’s got some issues,” Desi said indifferently. “Might not want to push her buttons.”

Adam didn’t know much about the Blade of Marmora, only what Shiro had told him. He still wasn’t entirely comfortable being close to Krolia or Kolivan so he hadn’t really talked to them, and he was certainly not comfortable being this close to Deek or Martek. Knowing that not all Galra were the same did not make it any easier to put his trust in one after what he’d been through.

Keith looked like he wanted to take a swing at Deek, which was understandable since she’d just hinted that Kolivan had ditched his people to go play with the Paladins. But the direct accusation that the thin lifeline the Blade offered to Empire dissidents had been destroyed by the Paladin’s absence hit home, and he was also bristling at that.

Adam stepped forward and grabbed Deek by her collar, dragging her forward. She had about two inches on him, but he doubted being a low-level grunt on one of Sendak’s ships made her any tougher than some random street thug.

“Let’s make something clear,” he said harshly. “You don’t get to stand here and play victim. Sounds like your brother’s dead because he refused to murder a bunch of other people to save himself. You’re alive because you helped take billions of lives to save your own skin, switching sides when it was _safe _doesn’t make you a fucking paragon of virtue. Every minute you’re standing here without a bullet in your skull is an injustice, so keep your mouth shut or I’m going to have a brand-new pair of Galra-skin boots.”

He let her go, sharply straightening her shirt and then shoving her backward away from him. Deek looked like she wanted to come back at him, but she really wasn’t a fighter. Probably some entry-level recruit, running errands on a cruiser. She visibly fumed over having her pity party rained out, but Adam wasn’t here for it. He wasn’t going to let somebody who probably wouldn’t have defected if she’d had a better job stand here and blame Keith for her buyable morals.

Martek was sitting with his legs hanging out of the SUV, unmoved by the entire conversation. He made no attempt to defend anybody, preferring to mind his own business.

“Those signals are getting closer,” he warned. “Both frequencies. One’s coming from the west, one from the northeast. They’re probably following the tracker’s broadcasting from these two.”

Desi didn’t look the least bit surprised at the revelation that Adam and Keith were bugged. Adam had removed both devices last night, he currently had them in his pocket to keep them from actively tracking and recording phone calls, but even these guys had assumed that the trackers were there before arriving.

“Excuse us for a minute,” Keith requested, taking a few steps back.

He caught Adam by the back of his shirt and pulled him along, and Adam let himself be removed from Slapping Deek distance. When they were a few yards away Keith dropped his voice and turned away from them.

“I don’t like that there are two different groups headed this way,” Keith murmured. “Or do you think that’s just a lie to get us to go along?”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” Adam admitted. “In general, climbing into cars with the South American version of the mafia is never a good idea, but if everyone in THEMIS is pissed at each other then standing around here might be a worse one.”

“We could just go,” Keith suggested. “Kailey’s got the car running. We can probably make it over there and get out of here. Get to Iquitos, get on that next plane.”

Adam said nothing. Keith, the annoying little shit that he was, picked up on what he was thinking far too easily.

“You’re considering going with them,” Keith observed. “You still want to see what’s up with this guy and your mom. I get it, but this is six gangsters and two Galra who sound like they know how to deal with THEMIS. You get in one of those cars, even you might not get back out.”

Adam clenched his jaw, irritated at the assessment. Mostly that it was Keith making it, and that it was a very correct assessment, and he really hated admitting Keith might be right. He was not a one-man army, as much as he’d thought he might have a shot at getting some questions answered when he’d initially left New Mexico, walking into a waiting murder car was just going to be a dead end.

“Okay,” Adam gave in after a moment. “Let’s get back to the car. We shouldn’t have stayed on the plane in the first place, this was kind of dumb.”

“I’ve done dumber,” Keith answered with a slight shrug of one shoulder. “If we’d left earlier, this might have worked out, it wasn’t the idea that was stupid. We just didn’t have enough time to really plan.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think we’re going to get another chance,” Adam snorted. “Once we’re gone these guys are gonna lock down like—”

A loud “twang” echoed through the street, and one of the men standing by the cars went down as a bullet passed through his neck and hit one of the SUVs. A second shot missed a woman who was already pulling out her own gun, also hitting the car and ricocheting.

“Looks like the guests are arriving,” a younger man called to Desi as he and Deek bound back to throw themselves behind an open door of one of the vehicles. “Party’s starting early.”

Adam and Keith exchanged a look, then turned as one and started running for the car. A shower of bullets threw up chunks of asphalt in front of them, making them skid to a stop. Adam grabbed Keith by the shirt and hauled him along with him as he pivoted, throwing them both behind another dead car on the road. Glass shattered overhead as they made themselves as small as possible, trying to avoid any bullets that might pass through the car at certain angles.

“I’m getting the distinct feeling they’re shooting directly at us,” Keith yelled over the noise.

“Really? Good, I thought it was just me,” Adam shouted back. He braved a peek up over the hood, scanning the area quickly, then dropped back down as more bullets whizzed by. “They’re up on the buildings, five of them. Some of them are aiming across the street, the other group must be shooting from these rooftops here.”

“Kailey!” Keith leaned around the car, waving wildly at the woman ducked down in the driver side. “Go! Get out of here, _go_!”

For a moment Adam feared she might try to help them and end up getting shot herself. She looked as though she was debating it, but thankfully came to the same conclusion they did; none of the shooters knew she was in the car yet, once it started moving she would have only a short window to get to safety.

She gunned it and took off, and Adam hoped she’d make it to Iquitos safely.

“So, I have a theory,” Keith said, pulling out his gun and rising to fire off a few warning shots before dropping back down. “If THEMIS is as good as Curtis says they are, these guys know exactly who we are and are trying to shoot us anyway.”

“It’s a very good theory,” Adam agreed. “I’ll see you it and raise you the second theory that this other group is the one my caller told me about. I think they’re after Desi’s group to try and get to Russo. If the Ghosts are really cannibalizing each other, group one is trying to kill us because we’re assets for group two.”

“So maybe group two is willing to give us a little bit of backup and get us out of here,” Keith suggested. “If we can get to them?”

“Maybe.” Adam winced as the stone facade of the building they were in front of chipped under the onslaught of shooting, showering them with debris. “But the two questions are how do we get to them, and can we trust them?”

A squeal of tires threw a shadow over the area as one of the bulletproof SUVs skidded to a stop by the car’s bullet-riddled hood. The door slid open and Desi leaned out, firing two shots up at the far rooftop before ducking back inside.

“I strongly suggest you take up our invite and go on a little trip,” Desi called. “It’s probably your corpses if you don’t.”

“It’s probably our corpses if we do,” Keith muttered.

“This is a terrible Choose Your Own Adventure,” Adam grumbled.

There was a ‘clang’ that drew their attention as something hit the ground by the trunk of the car and rolled into view. It spun a few times then came to a stop, barely a yard from where they were sitting.

Adam and Keith took one look at the grenade and scrambled to their feet. Adam shoved Keith into the SUV first, shielding him just in case, and the vehicle started to take off before he was even in. Desi pulled him roughly inside and threw the door closed as the SUV peeled off onto the road, flanked by the others as the group retreated from the gunfire. Behind them, the grenade exploded where they’d only been sitting moments before.

Adam dug in his pockets as they were ushered to the back, pulling out the two little trackers he’d removed from the phones. He passed them over to Desi, who glanced at them then threw them out the window so they couldn’t be hunted down.

Engines revving from behind them meant they weren’t immediately out of the woods, but at the speed they were driving Adam was hopeful they’d lose pursuit before anymore gunfire was exchanged.

Next to him, Keith looked out the windows at the other two SUVs on either side of them, then slid his gun back into its holster and sat back. He ran his hands through his hair, looking a mix of shocked and angry that Adam most definitely shared. Their supposed allies had just tried to kill them, or at least a faction of their supposed allies, and he highly doubted Curtis had any idea what was going on.

“Phones,” Desi demanded, holding out his hands for them. They both hesitated, but after a moment gave in and handed them over.

Just as Adam had done, Desi opened them up and double checked them for any further trackers. When he found none, he closed them back up, made sure they were off, and dumped them in the center console of the front seat where they couldn’t be reached or used.

He did not ask the for their guns, Adam noted. But he doubted it was because Desi wanted them to feel safe to be here. More likely, it was in case he lost any more people on this excursion and needed two extra shooters.

“Well,” Keith mumbled, slinking down a little in his seat for the ride. “I guess we’re definitely not making that flight to Argentina today.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“What about this one?” Hunk asked, holding up a magazine page featuring a female model.

“Yes,” Lance decided after a moment. Hunk flipped pages and showed another, this with a male model.

“And this one?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. This one?”

“No. I like longer hair.”

“On men or women?”

“Both.

“Like this?”

“Yes.”

Hunk reached the end of the magazine—the third he’d gone through in the last twenty minutes—and leaned back in his chair. They were in their hotel room in Melbourne, jetlagged and tired after a seventeen-hour flight that had landed them here only an hour ago at about midnight local time. Their hotel had not been far, and the officials who’d met them had gotten them checked in quickly so they could rest.

But they were so wound up, they’d just been sitting here for the last half hour trying to decide whether to order the all-night room service or just go to sleep.

“So I’m thinking,” Hunk said. “About you.”

“I’m touched.”

“No. Don’t get me wrong, I love you, but this is a different kind of thinking,” Hunk said. “I think you might be pan instead of bi.”

“I heard you making noises with your mouth, but I don’t understand the sentence,” Lance answered, pulling out his tablet when he heard a soft beep.

The screen showed a message that said “SIGNAL LOST.” Lance sat up stiffly, restarting the program and glaring at the tablet until it came back online.

“Well, they’re mostly the same, but I’ve heard the difference is the attraction,” Hunk explained, getting up from his chair and flopping face-down on his bed. “Like, bi people like everyone, but they supposedly feel different ways about men and women. But pan people like everyone, and they like everyone the same way. You have zero difference in your benchmarks for who you think is hot between men and women. Obviously I’m not either, and the article writers could just be pulling this out of their ass, but I just thought you might like options. ”

The program came back on, with the same message still prominently displayed. Signal lost. The tracker was either destroyed, broken, or had been turned off.

“Does it matter which one I am?” Lance asked absently, hitting the ‘scan’ command even though he knew he wasn’t going to be able to connect with the tracker. “Because I’m not really super interested in labels.”

“I don’t know if it matters,” Hunk admitted. “I guess it does, to some people. And if you ever wanted to put up the flag or something you’d need to pick the right one, I guess.”

“Is there a straight flag?” Lance gave up and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his temple. He didn’t know if Keith was in trouble, or if he’d just found the tracker and turned it off. Admittedly, it hadn’t been hidden very well.

“Um…I don’t know,” Hunk frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“Do you need a flag?” Lance pressed. “Do you have a weird, pressing need to announce to the world where your looking to put your unmentionables?”

“No?”

“Cool, neither do I.”

Lance got up and started to pace, stretching out the remaining kinks from the long plane ride. He pulled out his phone and texted Pidge but got no reply, just as he had no response to his last four texts. She and Matt had probably not landed yet, their flight was about as long as his and Hunk’s if not longer.

“It’s not about announcing,” Hunk tried to communicate his thoughts. “It’s about different groups having different experiences, and flags are kind of like the Hogwart’s house crests only for Pride. It’s just something your part of the community unites under.”

“It’s really weird when you talk about “the community,” Lance tried to keep his patience, but he really didn’t like talking about this. “I haven’t even talked to my parents yet, could you stop trying to pry me out of the closet?”

“I’m just, you know. Being supportive,” Hunk’s tone had that edge to it, the one that came when he was highly stressed about something he didn’t know how to handle. It was worrisome; much of Hunk’s overreaction to things could be overlooked, but he only ever took that tone when something was actually wrong.

It just added to Lance’s tension. Aside from whatever problem Hunk had yet to actually bring up, there were other things that were wrong. Like that Keith couldn’t connect to Black, and that he had found and turned off the tracker. Or that the Atlas would have left today, probably only a little more than an hour ago, in the early morning hours before full sunrise in New Mexico.

Veronica was out there, while he was here on Earth. It was a very big switch in their previous roles and he hated it.

Lance’s phone rang and he grabbed it from where he’d dropped it on the bed. It was Pidge.

“Pidge!”

“Lance!”

The two of them exclaimed over each other as he answered in video mode. Pidge looked as harried as he felt.

“Sorry! I just saw all your messages…we just got off the plane, and I had to talk to my aunt. Can you believe all this?”

“All what?” Lance asked, dropping back into his chair. “It’s midnight here, there’s nothing for me to see to not believe.”

“No!” She protested. “We had a layover, and I called Mom and Dad before the Atlas left. Dad said Keith and Adam had to make an emergency landing in Peru and had to wait for a new plane.”

“What? Nobody told me that!” Lance fumed. “When did this happen?”

“Yesterday,” Matt appeared over Pidge’s shoulder. “After all of us were already on our flights. Shiro was in on the call. They had to spend the night out there, while Curtis is chartering a new plane for them out of the nearby city later this morning.”

“They’re on the ground?” Lance asked in disbelief. “Just those two?”

“Well, the pilot and the flight attendant,” Pidge remembered.

“No, I mean no security!” Lance groaned. “No back up, just them!”

“Hey, they’ll be okay,” Hunk chimed in, coming to sit beside Lance so he could see the phone. “They’ve both faced way worse than plane engine trouble. They’re Paladins.”

Lance let out a moan and fell back on the bed, covering his face with both hands. He could feel his hair turning gray, his whole body age ten years over the course of ten seconds. He wondered if this was how Shiro felt when dealing with them, this overwhelming urge to first scream, then gather everyone together and make them sit in the corner to think about what they’d done.

“Did the Atlas launch?” He finally asked, weakly.

“Yes,” Pidge answered.

“And they’re completely out of non-confidential comm range? Nobody is allowed to send messages while they’re on mission?”

“Yes.”

Lance pushed himself up on his elbows. He looked at everybody, then gave a stressed-out whine.

“Keith can’t connect with Black.”

“What!?”

The reaction was immediate, and came from all three of them at once.

“What do you mean he can’t connect with Black?” Hunk demanded.

“He had Lotor give him a dose of that wacky anti-magic serum he’s been working on. It blocked everything, including his connection to the Black Lion.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before we let him go?” Pidge added.

“He told me he would be fine!” Lance lamented, throwing up his arms in dramatic defeat. “He said he was going from one military base at home to their military base there, and that he was going to be perfectly safe! He said he’s got his knife! He only had his knife in his time with the Blade, too.”

“But…but…!” Pidge was trying to come up with some protest, but it was obvious she couldn’t come up with anything that Lance hadn’t already tried. “Ugh, that idiot!”

“I put a tracker on him, but I think he found it and turned it off,” Lance grumbled. “I guess all I can do is wait until it’s not so early in Peru then call him and yell at him.”

“Great, this isn’t what we need,” Matt let out a huff. “If they don’t make it to their meeting this afternoon, between them disappearing and all those pictures, we’re going to have one hell of a time answering questions at these conferences.”

“What pictures?” Lance asked absently, rubbing his temple again. He was beginning to feel some serious pressure there.

Matt and Pidge looked at him, wide-eyed, then looked at each other. As one, they looked over at Hunk, who was suspiciously quiet.

“Oh no,” Lance groaned. “That’s why you’re so uptight right now, you know something I don’t know. What pictures? What new nightmare do I have to deal with now?”

“It’s not really that bad,” Hunk said carefully, slowly handing over his phone. “I mean, they got your good side.”

Lance took the phone, took one look at the article Hunk had up on it, and immediately felt the urge to go slam his head in the elevator doors a few times.

The photos were clearly taken on Garrison grounds, in a couple different places where Lance had obviously thought he and Keith were alone. Near the Lion hangar, in a side hall near the public cafeteria, in the hall near the ballroom during the dance. There were five or six pictures, all very clearly showing him and Keith exchanging kisses.

Lance had never felt so stressed in his entire life, which was saying something. For a moment everything in his brain went completely numb, he couldn’t even form thoughts or words around the sudden, debilitating sensation of pure dread.

He dropped his own phone, which Hunk caught, and exited the article. He started scrolling frantically, looking at all the websites and social media blogs that were already circulating the images.

“Oh…oh God,” Lance felt weak as he turned the phone toward Hunk. “Is this…is this…what is this?”

“It’s, um, a fan page,” Hunk said delicately. “Remember when I told you never to Google yourself?”

“This is a _drawing_ of _me_ in Keith’s_ lap_,” Lance screeched. “And…am I a _mermaid_ in this one?”

“I saw one of me as a penguin once,” Matt volunteered. “But it was some weird, Madagascar movie poster somebody drew of me, Shiro, and Dad about Kerberos.”

“Hunk!” Lance practically shrieked. “This one says you Liked it!”

“That one is a good one!” Hunk protested. “Look, it’s got that really nice picture of you walking with Allura, then that one with you and Keith, and the caption says “_We stan one (1) Bi-con_.”

Lance let out a wordless squawk of distress and let himself slide completely off the bed, hitting the floor with a thump. He pulled the blanket down after him, though it only went so far since Hunk was sitting on it, and buried his head under it. He couldn’t deal with this right now, this was too much. His friends were all going to see this, his family. His mother an—”

“Oh, God, Mom,” Lance whispered, shooting back up, wide-eyed. “Mom is going to see this. Oh, I’m going to get murdered.”

“I don’t think your mother’s the kind of person to get mad at you for dating a guy,” Hunk frowned.

“No! But she’s going to pull out the really stiff shoe for the beating when she finds out I’ve been dating somebody and didn’t tell her!” Lance whimpered. “When she finds out she’s been letting me stay over at his place and that we were dating instead of just friends…oh, oh I’m going to get it. I’ve never lied to my mother, never, and the one time I try to do it the universe does this me!”

“Well, fortunately you’re in Australia and she can’t reach you from there,” Matt pointed out brightly. “So can we discuss how we’re supposed to answer when questions about this come up?”

This was a nightmare. This was Hell. Lance had wanted to keep this quiet for as long as possible for a reason, and that reason was all of the side chaos that was going to come from it. People were going to be asking questions, personal questions that were none of their business, not just of him but of his family. And Keith, he had enough trouble being a Galra, but the world finding out he was dating a fellow pilot?

Especially right after it came out that Shiro, a former Lion pilot, was about to publicly marry the newest one?

Lance did not have the stomach for this right now. Suddenly, he didn’t have the stomach for anything that wasn’t black and white and covered by procedure.

“Just…deflect,” Lance said, hauling himself up off the floor. “Change the subject. Tell them that private lives aren’t up for discussion except routine questions about Shiro’s and Adam’s wedding. Bluff your way through, we just need to get to the point of getting permission to call in the Lions. Once we can do that, we’re heading back to the Garrison.”

“Wait, what?” Pidge blinked. “We have two more stays in other countries after this one.”

“I know, but something doesn’t feel right,” Lance frowned. “Come on, I can’t be the only one who thinks that.”

“Well, no,” Hunk admitted. “But I’m always worried about something so I thought it was just me.”

“I guess things do feel a little off,” Pidge allowed. “I thought it was just me and my nerves.”

Matt looked at them all and shrugged, which just reinforced the feeling Lance had. The Paladins were linked up in ways that couldn’t really be replicated or explained, if only they were feeling this then something was probably about to go down.

“Okay, everybody try to get some rest,” Lance ordered. “Pidge, Matt, your meeting is in about three hours, ours is in seven. If you can get permission to bring in Green before we head out, let me know. If we have to, Hunk and I will charter a damn boat out into international waters to call Yellow or Red to get out of here and meet you. If Keith and Adam aren’t safely on their way to Argentina by the time we land in New Mexico, we’re going to stealth into Peru in Green and have a look for ourselves.”

“All right,” Pidge nodded. “But the Garrison isn’t going to like it.”

“The Garrison doesn’t have to like it, we don’t work for the Garrison,” Lance answered. “We work with the Coalition, we do what we’ve got to do.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, absently wondering if it really was going gray.

“Let’s just try to not have the whole planet on fire when Shiro gets back, okay?”


	3. Chapter 3

James waited until everyone else had scattered to follow their orders, seeing no reason to rush since Engineering wasn’t far, then offered a hand to Ziran as the other man came to join him.

“Hey. I’m James,” he introduced himself and gestured for Ziran to go up the Atlas’ boarding ramp, falling into step beside him to guide the way. When they stepped through the entrance airlock—barely closed after everyone else had rushed ahead before a soldier had to open it again for them—he pulled off his helmet. Ziran did the same.

The Altean slowed down once they were on the ship, reaching out to run a gloved hand across the wall and look around in wonder.

His hair was long, a bit that wasn’t held back in the low ponytail he wore falling down in his face. It was a soft blue, almost matching the light purple marks on his pale face, framing the bright pink eyes that flitted left and right.

“This ship looks Altean,” Ziran said, his voice tinged with delight as he moved to touch everything he could reach. “But it’s also not. It goes from Altean to not to back again so seamlessly…this engineering, it’s wonderful! Your people must be very advanced.”

“Um,” James answered smartly, not really certain what kind of reply he was supposed to give to that since just that morning he’d watched Nadia pay a Private ten dollars to eat a dead bug. “Yes? Well, no. Yes and no. Maybe.”

Ziran chuckled, brushing his hair back out of his face as he pushed away from the wall to follow James.

“I get it. Every planet has their idiots,” he sympathized. “Do you work in Engineering as well, James?”

James hated when attractive people used his name. Especially attractive people with nice voices, it was so goddamn _irritating_ when he was trying to get his job done and somebody just showed up being good looking and friendly. He debated solving this current occurrence of said problem by ejecting Ziran right back out the airlock and pretending they’d never met, but then he’d have to explain to his Captain why he was yeeting brand new allies out into Space Antarctica with no warning.

“Don’t breathe the air,” he said instead, reaching up without looking to thunk Ziran’s helmet back on his head. Sideways, from the sounds of the other man suddenly losing his balance and having to scuffle with it, but he refused to look over as they walked. “We might be carrying something you’re not immune to.”

There was, of course, zero chance of that being a problem. Numerous checks on Allura, Romelle, and then Ariella had shown that Altean immune systems were very similar to Human ones. Everyone on this ship was certified by a doctor as being clean before they’d been allowed on this trip, if it didn’t make them sick it wouldn’t make Ziran sick either.

They reached Engineering as Ziran finally managed to get his helmet straightened out. James preceded him inside, but didn’t go very far.

“Dr. Holt?”

“Just a second!” There was a faint crashing sound, followed by Slav’s voice giving some kind of commentary James couldn’t make out, then Sam Holt appeared looking more than a little bit harried. “Yes! I’m here!”

“This is Ziran, he’s from the colony,” James explained. “They’re under quarantine, they have a really bad epidemic going on and Shiro wants us to get two balmera crystals prepped to move into their power station. He also needs us to ground the ship and switch over to the third crystal for power.”

“He wants to run this ship on one crystal?” Sam asked critically. “We’re not going to be good for much if we do that.”

“I know. So does he,” James answered. “These people really need treatment, and fast, so the Atlas is about to become a field hospital. Shiro needs the Zero crystal to try and power the atmosphere modules, he thinks we can at least get somewhat breathable air in the area with enough tweaking. Allura’s already headed to the bridge to wait for the switch over.”

“All right,” Sam didn’t look like he liked the idea, but he could tell it was necessary if what James had just said was true. “We won’t be able to fire back if Honerva shows up, but I think I can prioritize the ship’s systems for defense. She’ll at least be able to get a particle barrier up.”

James nodded, looking over at Ziran again in spite of himself. The other man was looking around with wide eyes, and Sam waved to him.

“Hello,” he greeted. “I’m Sam Holt. You’re…Ziran, was it? Why don’t you take that helmet off, you don’t need that here.”

“Oh, James said I wasn’t supposed to because of—”

“Time constraints,” James said quickly, backing to the exit. “They’re getting their generators ready to hook up the crystals, so he’s going to be heading right back out the doors. I’m going to go let my people know what’s going on.”

He stepped out into the hallway without waiting for an answer, and headed back down the hall to the lift. It was empty, and within less than a minute he was stepping out and heading into the hangar where the MFE pilots were double-checking their fighters. Just past the MFEs were the Sincline ships, where Romelle was pacing listlessly.

James went to her first. He knew it must be driving her mad to be here while the colony where her people currently were was just outside the doors, and she needed to know what was going on.

“Hey,” he caught her lightly as she paced by, tugging her to a stop. “I need to talk to you real quick. Can you come over here?”

He gestured to the maintenance office and saw her face sink.

“Something’s wrong,” she guessed, the worry clear in her voice. “It’s bad, isn’t it? Worse than we thought?”

“I…really would rather talk to you in private,” James insisted.

He let go of her arm and took her hand, pulling her over to the empty room. By the time he closed the door she was stiff and tense, barely breathing as she waited to hear the bad news.

“First of all, I don’t have any news about how anyone is doing,” James said honestly.

He tried to be gentle, already knowing how this was going to feel. He had seen his father’s plane shot out of the air by the Galra, he had watched his mother wasting away until Lance had busted his ass to try and give him the miracle he’d hoped but never asked for. Romelle’s parents were somewhere out in that colony, and they might be in the number of the dead.

“There’s some kind of illness going around,” he didn’t want to be explicit, but he also didn’t want to undermine the severity of the situation. “We’re going to try to help them, but I honestly don’t know how bad it is. People have died, they’re still dying, but Shiro’s pulling everything together so we can save as many as we can.”

“Oh no,” Romelle said softly, covering her mouth with both hands.

She had known there was a possibility that people would have lost their lives. James had spent the last two months helping to train her as more of a fighter pilot than supply pilot, and both he and Veronica had tried to prepare her for the realities of war. She had already been through a lot of hardship in her life, but facing the death of her loved ones was something James had been hoping would be avoided.

“We don’t know what it is yet,” James stressed. “And the colony’s been without a lot of really important supplies. We’re going to get them into clean beds, get the sick away from the others, try to stop the spread. We’ll save everyone we can. But the Atlas isn’t going to be able to fly, and the cruiser is full of children and barely recovered civilians. If Honerva shows up, everyone is going to need the MFEs and Sincline to protect them. So I know that this really, really sucks, but those people out there _need_ you to be able to get into this ship and fly if necessary. You’re one of the only people who can do that right now. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered, nodding dully. “I know, I get it. I’m not a doctor, I have to stay here and do what I came along to do.”

“And you’re going to do it better than anyone else could,” James said encouragingly. “You’ve gotten really good over the last few months, between you, Veronica, and Allura, nobody who makes the mistake of showing up here stands a chance.”

She nodded again, and his heart really did go out to her. He could only imagine what it must be like, knowing that people she cared about were dying right outside but being unable to go anywhere near them.

He hated seeing her this way. She had become a regular fixture in his life since their escape from the Galra outpost, and he genuinely cared about her feelings.

“There are a couple people from the colony here,” James tried. “A woman named Sachelle went up to the med bay with Shiro.”

“She’s a doctor,” Romelle confirmed what James had already suspected. “She and Acxa ran the Abyss facility, doing medical research and treating overexposure there. She’s gifted, Acxa’s not, so Sachelle would travel here to check in with their medical team and help oversee complicated procedures. She was stuck here when…everything happened.”

James could see the guilt on her face, and knew she was thinking back to whatever had happened when Keith had brought her to accuse Lotor of basically being a rat bastard. She was blaming herself, Allura was blaming herself, Lotor was blaming himself…there was a lot of self-torment going on here, and none of it was going to change anything.

“Well, she’s not stuck anymore,” he said. “And now she’s getting introduced to a shiny, fully stocked medical bay and a small army of techs and doctors just waiting to help her and Acxa do what they need to do. There’s also a guy down in Engineering who might have a few minutes to talk to you, though. He can probably give you some information on who’s sick and who’s not…his name is Ziran.”

Romelle’s head shot up and she stared at him like she was expecting him to say he was joking. He’d never had a woman looked at him quite that shocked before, and he’d said some pretty dumb things to ladies in bars over the years.

“Ziran’s here?” Romelle ran past him, forgetting her strength and nearly knocking him clear to the ground. “Oh! I’m sorry!”

She grabbed him and righted him, then took off running out of the room. James rubbed his arm where she’d practically slammed into him, wishing he had even half the muscle power some of these women had.

“I can see why he’d cause that reaction, but damn,” he muttered, rotating his arm as he stepped back out into the hangar and headed over to talk to his pilots.

* * * * *

The lights came on in the colony for the first time in what Shiro understood had to be almost three years. For the first time since well before the epidemic started, the air scrubbers were turned up to full power, and he could smell the fresh oxygen beginning to spill into the hallway where he stood to push away the stagnant. A faint hum started as the heating system kicked on, specialty tiles at specific intervals throughout the corridor beginning to radiate heat out into the cold space.

He was taking a risk, he knew, standing here without his helmet on, but there was something Ryou had told him that made him a little more confident in his safety.

_We don’t get sick_, the other man had said. _Our DNA’s so mixed and novel it doesn’t match any other species well enough for their germs to affect us. Of course, that also means it doesn’t match well enough to procreate in the natural fashion, so I hope you weren’t planning on having kids._

Shiro didn’t know how he felt about being so genetically distinct that he and Ryou were literally their own animal kingdom, at least when it came to children. He had always assumed he wasn’t going to survive to have any, so when he’d lived he hadn’t exactly had plans for a future with kids. But having a system that was immune to anything on this planet simply because there was nothing like him and Ryou in the universe, that was proving to be very useful.

“Everything is working in here,” he confirmed over the comms. “The doors leading to the collapsed area one segment over are all sealed up.” 

“Peterson just called in that the water recyclers have been sterilized and are back to running at full capacity,” Nikolaev answered. “We’ve got air, heat, water, and light. The balmera crystals are holding stable.” 

“Good. Tell the medical bay they have a green light to break the quarantine as soon as they’re ready. And let James know to get ready for launch, we’re going to take a look at those terraformers.” 

“Are you sure, sir? It’s gotten pretty dark out here while you’ve been inside. Shouldn’t you wait until morning?” 

“No.” Shiro put his helmet back on and made his way down the hall, past empty living quarters and spartan leisure spaces the inhabitants had been forced to abandon. “We don’t rest until we absolutely have to. Transporting patients back and forth from the Atlas without a functional, sealed dock is going to slow down the medical personnel, if we can speed this up by getting some oxygen going in this area then we’re going to.” 

“Yes, sir. I’ll alert the party.” 

Shiro returned to the Atlas and made a brief stop in his quarters. Not being able to get sick didn’t mean he was unable to carry anything on his skin, and although he was fairly certain there had been nothing in the air where he’d been wandering he gave himself a quick scrub down in the shower and changed into his secondary flight suit.

He had taken a bit of a gamble when he’d brought Sachelle and Ziran on board without first having them screened to be sure they weren’t infected, but he’d been running on the assumption that the Alteans would certainly not send anybody who was sick out into contact with Lotor. The medical techs had given him a dressing down for that, but both Alteans as well as a chunk of the colony medical staff had been tested and cleared over the last fourteen hours.

Fourteen hours just to get the colony up and running again. In that time, a young nurse had been keeping them appraised of the situation inside, and seven more lives had been lost. It was devastating to hear.

But despite the number of losses ticking upward, Sachelle was also receiving good news; the fresh medical supplies included IV needles and saline bags to tackle excessive dehydration, and antibiotics to help fight secondary infections. Three colonists, although still a long way from getting better, had already begun to show signs of improvement.

As Shiro stepped out into the MFE hangar, he was met with the sight of a large plastic tunnel running from the freight lift to the medical bay. Inside he could see gurneys being moved as those who were in the worst condition were transferred to the emergency care zone, each one accompanied by masked and gloved doctors or nurses calling out vitals and care orders to their accompanying medical technicians.

The set up was awkward, he had to leave through a side door and take a hallway around the back of the freight lift in order to get around the tunnel, but it wasn’t an inconvenience he was going to complain about.

When he arrived, the MFE pilots were already prepping their jets for the trip out. They would be transporting him, Allura, Lotor, and the Altean engineer Ziran out to the power hub for the planet’s terraformers. Because the module power station had run on such concentrated quintessence, it had been built as far out as the colonists could safely travel in the harsh atmosphere in order to avoid any accidental leaks causing mass overexposure.

Allura and Lotor were already present when he arrived. Ziran was just returning from the colony with Romelle, both of them all smiles and holding hands. Shiro had to do a double take as he came to stand by the MFE were James was leaning with his arms crossed.

“Well…that wasn’t expected,” Shiro admitted, watching Ziran dip his head down to give Romelle a brief kiss.

“Yeah, apparently that’s her boyfriend,” James answered.

“After eight years apart?” Shiro raised an eyebrow. “When did they get together, when they were twelve?”

“They’re both in their thirties, apparently.”

“They’re both…”

“Yeah. Lotor’s ten thousand, they’re thirty-something, Acxa’s twenty-seven. Allura’s…who knows? Like, seventy probably. Welcome to Rivendell.”

_I have no idea how Alteans work_, Shiro realized, looking around at all of them. It had never occurred to him that Romelle and Acxa could be older than him. The children from Colony One matched human growth patterns for the most part, he’d had no reason to think that didn’t continue past the teen years.

He shrugged it off. In the long run, it had nothing to do with anything and knowing ages now changed nothing.

Shiro turned back to the MFE, where James was leaning with his arms crossed, still watching Romelle and Ziran. He looked mildly pissed off, which to be honest was sort of just how James’ face generally looked, but it was a bit more pissed off than normal. Shiro looked over at the couple, then back at James.

“Is this going to be an issue?” Shiro asked. James broke his semi-glare, looking startled.

“Is what going to be an issue?”

“You spent the last two months helping teach Romelle to be a fighter pilot,” Shiro pointed out. “Now you’re glaring at her boyfriend like you’d like to see him set on fire. Is your crush going to be an issue?”

James looked at him blankly, then Shiro could practically hear something in his brain snap. Apparently the fact that he might have developed a thing for Romelle hadn’t occurred to him before it was pointed out.

All these benchmarks for growing up, like crushes and sneaking out and dances, an entire generation had lost those things in the invasion and war. They were so far divorced from what youth on Earth had been they barely recognized it when it kicked them in the face.

“No, there isn’t any issue,” James said firmly.

“You sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

James pushed away from the jet and waved to the other pilots to board their planes. Shiro looked over to where Allura and Lotor were preparing to leave.

“Are we all ready to go?” He called. “You have the crystal?”

“Yes,” Allura called as she climbed in behind Nadia, pointing Lotor over to Ryan’s plane. “And we’ve already loaded tools we may need.”

Ziran and Romelle parted, and he made his way over to Ina’s plane. Shiro climbed in behind James, feeling an unexpected wave of giddiness as the canopy closed overhead. It had been a long time since he’d been in the cockpit of a fighter jet, and the nostalgia hit him hard.

“Ina, Ryan, take point,” Shiro ordered as the engines started to whine. “Lotor and Ziran will direct you, we’ll follow.”

“Roger.”

The planes taxied across the hangar, through the inner airlock. In less than a minute the outer airlock was opening and Shiro felt the sudden, all-at-once momentum of the MFE shooting forward into the sky. The MFEs were a very different experience from the old human fighter jets, but some of the thrill was lost by the fact that they still didn’t compare to piloting a Lion.

Down below, there was nothing to see but the silhouettes of rocky outcroppings in the faint light of the planet’s two moons rising on the horizon. No forests, no lakes, no grass, only dry crags and frozen fields. Shiro wondered if there had ever been life on this planet, if it had ever had liquid water and a breathable atmosphere. Perhaps it had once been lush and beautiful a few hundred million years ago, before the loss of that atmosphere opened everything up to extinction.

His musings were brought to an end by the glint of the faint nighttime light off of something metallic, nestled snuggly down in a ravine that looked like a portion of a collapsed lava tube. Ryan landed at Lotor’s direction and the others followed suit, landing in the empty, pebble-filled plane at the ravine’s edge.

There was an entrance to a lift here, a large elevator completely enclosed in a tube to protect it from solar radiation. The lack of any kind of windows made Shiro feel almost nauseous as the lift suddenly sped downward, giving him the sensation of near free fall. He was glad when they stepped out into a cold, dark hallway and switched on lanterns and flashlights.

“Everything that could be built down below the surface in natural caverns and valleys, was,” Lotor told them, his voice echoing as they followed him slowly through the dark. “We knew we’d need as much natural protection from the sun as we could get while we were developing the artificial. If everything had gone according to plan, this colony would have had a thin atmosphere and some level of radiation protection by now.”

He led them around a curved hallway, very similar in structure to the command center building of Colony One, the only sounds in the shadows their shuffling feet.

Next to him, Shiro saw Ziran lean over to lightly elbow James.

“Your leg,” he said quietly. “It’s a prosthetic, isn’t it? It shows in your walk. Were you born that way, or were you hurt?”

Shiro stiffened slightly, preparing to step in between them. Ziran was very friendly, and a civilian, it was understandable that his idea of what was acceptable would be very different from theirs. He didn’t want James starting an incident.

But James only looked down at his leg, and continued to walk with his gaze straight ahead.

“War injury,” he answered succinctly. “A few months ago. It’s kind of heavy, and it doesn’t always react like my real leg. I’m still getting used to it.”

Ziran nodded, turning his flashlight down so he could smack it first against his hip, then his leg. Both impacts made a soft, metallic clanging sound.

“Exoskeleton,” he told James. “I was on the roof of the northern quadrant of the colony when the lava tube under it collapsed. Our sonar equipment was weak and when we were building we, didn’t realize they were there. I broke my spine and severed the nerves, the only way I can walk is with this mechanical frame.”

“Your whole body’s wrapped in metal?” James asked, tapping the same spot with his own flash light. “Doesn’t sound comfortable.”

“It’s not. It hurts like hell, to be honest. I spend most of my time in a mobility chair, I only use this when they really need me to. It’s controlled by alchemy, so it gives me a headache to boot.

“But I’m alive,” he added brightly. “I almost wasn’t. But I’m rambling, the point is that if you’d like me to take a look at your leg sometime, I may be able to adjust the weight for you. Psyferite is a very light and strong metal.”

“Stop lying,” James answered. “You engineers are all the same, you’re dying to get a look at the wiring.”

“I’m dying to get a look at the wiring,” Ziran cheerfully admitted.

“Sorry. I don’t flash body parts until at least the second date.”

Nadia started laughing, and so did Ryan. Ina didn’t seem to get what was so funny, but Ziran seemed perfectly amused. Shiro relaxed when it appeared James wasn’t going to start any trouble, and Lotor brought them all to a halt as the end of the hallway suddenly loomed large in their faces.

“Shiro, come put yourself to use,” Lotor requested, moving to one side of a set of automatic double doors.

“Is this because you want me to be a gentleman, or because you want to test my strength?” Shiro asked.

“Yes.”

Lotor had been on Earth too long, or at the very least too long in the company of the Paladins. Shiro moved forward and gripped the door edges, bracing himself. Allura had opened a similar door with brute strength when they’d followed the mocked Blade signal into a trap, but she had also lifted and thrown him at one point so Shiro wasn’t really sure if he could match her.

On the mental count of three, he threw himself into it with all his strength, and slowly the door slid open. It was tough, but not as impossibly hard as he’d thought it would be.

Then again, he had watched security footage of Ryou blatantly overpowering a reinforced door’s auto-close on the Atlas, so he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised.

Lotor didn’t wait, ducking under him to step into the inky blackness with the confidence of one who knew exactly what was there. He moved across a wide catwalk to a railing, only his outline visible as he leaned over and shone his light downward. As Shiro went to join him, he felt a wave of vertigo upon discovering that the room was basically one big, dark hole.

“Very nice,” James announced, looking down. “Let me volunteer right now to take one for the team and stay up here on guard duty while the rest of you go down into the murder ditch.”

“Just for that we’re sending you first,” Nadia answered. “Oh Fearless Leader.”

James scoffed, but Lotor walked along the railing a few yards until his light fell on a large, open mine lift. He brushed a layer of dirt and debris off the controls while Ziran opened a compartment and began slicing wires to adapt it to work with one of the small pieces of balmera crystal they’d brought. The smaller crystals were meant to be temporary batteries until full power was restored.

“All right,” Lotor announced when the controls began to glow. “All aboard for the murder ditch.”

“How far down does this go?” Allura asked as they all slowly shuffled onto the lift.

“About two stories,” Ziran answered. Like Lotor, he was completely unfazed by the dark, having worked here and being used to the layout of the place. “This column has metal walls two feet thick. It’s meant to process purified quintessence that Lotor was collecting during the rift gate construction, and what he was going to begin collecting after it went online. But that stuff’s powerful, so the fuel was tanked and siphoned from down there to avoid overexposure in case the containment leaked.”

Something akin to a nuclear reactor. Shiro had seen how they worked, with the radioactive material being kept separate from where people worked. Of course, they were going to have to go down here and try to adapt this tiny crystal to a fuel converter built for a tank of quintessence, and they were going to have to do it in less than eight hours.

He activated his wrist screen and turned on his timer as they began the descent into the power station’s core.

* * * * * * * * * *

Being kidnapped by an international terrorist’s lackeys was turning out to be a hell of a lot less exciting that Keith had initially believed this would be. It had started out with a bang, all that gunfire an even their near maiming at the hands of a grenade, but once they had lost their tail the small convoy had moved out onto open road and everything had quickly become very dull.

Their driver said nothing and was never introduced, and Desi wasn’t exactly talkative. He sat in the middle seat of the SUV with a tablet, making no attempt to hide the fact that he was regularly sending messages to somebody but also making it impossible for either of them to see who.

Both Keith and Adam were armed, but that was all they had besides the clothes on their backs. Their phones were in the center console, and Adam’s laptop was in the car with Kailey, in Iquitos and probably on Curtis’ chartered plane by now.

It had been seven hours since the shootout. The only reassuring thing about that was that he doubted these people would drive them seven hours out just to shoot them and ditch their bodies, so they were probably supposed to be kept alive at least until they reached their destination. Wherever that might be.

And as much as Keith didn’t want to admit it, he was calmed by the fact that Adam didn’t seem overly tense about any of this. He was being an annoying asshole, of course, draped across the back seat with his stupidly long legs tossed over Keith’s lap, so that he could rest his head on the edge of the open window and lazily watch the world go by. He seemed at peace here, in this strange, green place that Keith had never seen before, and at least if they had to make a run for it Keith was sure Adam would be able to navigate the land here.

Abruptly, the cars turned off of the winding main road, onto a smaller one that went on about half a mile before the trees fell away. There was a small town here, honestly no different than any small town Keith had seen in the US. Nobody looked twice at the three military SUVs, so either this was their final destination or these guys passed through here on the regular.

They eventually slowed to a stop and parked, and both the driver and Desi climbed out. Keith wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do, but Adam finally moved. The side door to the SUV had been left open and he climbed out, so Keith followed suit.

They in a small commercial area, a not-very-exotic Main Street type rode, outside of a small restaurant. Others were climbing out of their cars, but rather than to come deal with their prisoners it appeared they were convening to discuss their fallen cohort. Desi, however, headed inside, and the SUV driver put his hand in his jacket in a way that said the two of them were to follow.

Keith stepped into the cool wave of air-conditioning, and his stomach immediately growled at the scents wafting across the air. The last time he’d eaten had been on their way to find a room yesterday, and that had only been a sandwich he’d quickly wolfed down from the truck stop.

There was another man waiting inside, this one dressed far more casually. He came to meet Desi and the two spoke in hushed tones. Keith saw him pass Desi what looked like two large wads of US $100 bills, which quickly disappeared into the larger man’s pocket. Desi turned back to them.

“This is where I dump you,” he announced, holding out a hand. The driver, who had come in behind them, produced the two cell phones and handed them over. Desi offered them both to Adam, who took them and shoved them both into his pocket. “Don’t try to leave, you’ll be dead before you get across the street. Enjoy.”

The newcomer, a graying man with Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, waved over the hostess from where she had just finished seating a young couple. At his request she gave him to slips of paper, and he handed one to each of them. Keith looked at his, having no idea what it said since it wasn’t in English.

“Corner table,” the man advised, immediately disappearing into the dining room.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” Keith admitted, looking around. The place didn’t look dangerous, just an average restaurant during early afternoon. He held up his slip of paper. “What is this?”

“This is a by-kilo restaurant,” Adam answered, sweeping the room until he found the right corner table, where the man who’d met them was sitting with some other people. “That’s a food ticket. It’s in Portuguese, I’m pretty sure we’ve crossed over into Brazil.”

“Should we try to leave?” Keith wondered, following Adam’s gaze. “Desi was probably bluffing, right? Or we could go out the back?”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” Adam admitted. He looked down at the ticket in his own hand. “I don’t think I want to risk it though, at least not until I get a feel for this place and is layout. I think we’re safe here in the crowd, at least for a little bit. Come on.”

He headed into the dining room, past a few booths to a row of buffet tables.

“Do you have any dietary restrictions?” Adam asked.

“Uh, I don’t really like spicy,” Keith admitted. “That’s about it.”

Adam handed him a plate and Keith followed him down a line of trays filled with foods that he could barely identify. It wasn’t that the food here was totally strange, he could make out the main ingredients of most dishes, most of it was just prepared in ways he wasn’t used to.

He was afraid he was going to have to ask what everything was, but Adam started putting things on both their plates. Keith shut his mouth and let him do it, too hungry to care what ended up on his as long as he got something in his stomach.

At the end of a line there were restaurant employees who put the plates on a scale, which was when Keith understood what ‘per-kilo’ meant. Adam gave the woman their tickets, and she scribbled down what they owed for this plate before giving it back. It was basically the get-up-and-serve-yourself version of dim sum, which Hunk had made him try out.

Once they were done having their tickets noted, Adam hesitated for a moment then headed for the table in the corner. Keith followed, taking stock of the restaurant as they moved through it.

It wasn’t hard to figure out who they were meeting, Axel Russo looked exactly like the picture Curtis had shown with the exception of wearing an even uglier shirt in real life. The two men with him had the appearance of tourists who had taken a wrong turn at Miami, and they looked like they smelled like Ben-Gay. Keith didn’t know if it was by design, to make them less suspicious, or if Russo was just fond of hanging out with middle-aged men who needed a man cave and always joked about hating their wives.

“This should be fun,” Keith heard Adam say to himself just before they reached the table.

Russo had a plate in front of him, but the other two were just drinking something out of mugs. Adam’s body language practically screamed that he didn’t know this guy and was jumpy, but Russo washed down what he was eating quickly and opened his arms in welcome as if they were all best friends.

“Good, you made it alive,” Russo greeted, gesturing to two empty seats across the table. “You know, that’s not as much of a guarantee around here these days as it used to be.”

Adam hesitated again, but sat down. Keith did as well, glancing around. Their backs were to the restaurant, which he didn’t like, but this was a public place and he hoped that meant it was mostly safe.

“You two can go,” Russo said to the two men with him, waving absently. “I’d like a private chat with Earth’s mighty space rangers here.”

Keith watched the two men get up, taking their mugs with them. They made their way across the restaurant to a table with some locals dressed similarly, a game of what looked like Dominos laid out on. When he turned back, Russo’s air of lightheartedness had disappeared and he was looking at both of them in annoyance.

“I was under the impression you jackasses were warned not to come here,” he said. “And yet, here you sit before me. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? You’re as dumb as your mother, act first and think later.”

“Know my mother, do you?” Adam asked coolly.

“Everyone this side of the equator knows Jacinta, she’s a human cataclysm,” Russo answered, picking his fork back up. “But only a handful know she’s your mother. I suggest you eat…you’re walking targets, this might be the last break you get for a while.”

Adam glared at Russo, but after a moment of internal struggle he gave in and pulled his plate closer. Keith had been absolutely dying to eat something from the small pile in front of him, he was starving, and he took his cue from Adam to grab his own fork.

Still, he remained seated slightly sideways in his chair, keeping a lookout for any changes in the environment that might be red flags while Adam focused on Russo. He knew he should probably take charge of this as the leader of the Paladins, but he was out of his depth here. Adam didn’t seem completely comfortable with any of this, but he at least seemed to have some faint light in the dark to follow.

“So I have two scenarios in front of me, and both of them scream “room temperature IQs” upon consideration,” Russo continued into the silence. “You’re supposed to be able to summon those space ships of yours on a whim, but you still ended up hanging out in Peru waiting for your inside guy to get you set up to leave. So either neither one of you can currently summon your ships and you decided to come down here anyway, or you’re choosing not to summon your ships and letting yourselves be pulled into a gargantuan clusterfuck for…the fun of it, I guess. So which one is it?”

Adam opened his mouth, but Keith stopped him with a light nudge of his foot under the table.

“How do you know the ships can be summoned?” Keith asked. “Press releases only say they were going to be sent to us when we were ready for them at our destinations. Only a few people know we can call them, and the operation they were in on is classified.”

Russo picked up his glass of water and leaned back in his seat, giving them a small smile.

“My real name is Jaime Riviera, THEMIS Lieutenant General of northern South America,” he answered. “Not at your service, so I suggest you don’t request anything. Everyone at my level knows everything there is to know about you. You’re half-Galra, your father was a human fireman and your mother is an operative for rebel Galra organization. You started out as the pilot of the Red Lion, trained with the Blade of Marmora, and returned as the pilot of the Black.

“Wolfe here—or Shirogane, is it?—is half alien of only recently discovered origin, his mother is a batshit insane special forces mercenary and his father is a secret nobody’s supposed to know but a small, privileged few do. He spent the last year and a half as a POW pit fighter and is now currently the new pilot of the Blue Lion. Stop me if I’m getting any of this wrong.”

“You’re not,” Adam answered, looking at him with eyes narrowed slightly. “What the fuck is a THEMIS Lieutenant General, and why is one working with terrorists?”

“I don’t work with terrorists, I work against terrorists,” Russo answered. “I started out in the Peruvian special forces and eventually got tapped by THEMIS for deep cover work because of all the contacts I’d cultivated. I’ve been playing the part of Axel Russo for twenty-five years, because let’s face it: crime lords have a farther reach than cops. There are only three other people left in THEMIS who are on my rank level, and nobody in South America who has my financial or social reach. I’m one of four who are rightfully next in line for the top title of Warchief, I have absolutely no reason to rock the boat by encouraging social unrest.”

Keith looked at Adam, who seemed just as thrown by this turn of events as he was. He pushed his plate away, forgetting his hunger, and leaned forward against the table.

“Hold on,” Keith said, trying to puzzle through this. “Let me get this straight…you’re a top-level THEMIS officer, under cover as an international crime lord? What about these ties to Babel you’re supposed to have?”

“Babel,” Russo snorted derisively, taking another sip of his water. “Get the hell out of here with that bullshit. Babel doesn’t exist anymore, sweetheart, not since the invasion. The anti-alien whackadoos were the first ones we encouraged to storm Galra strongholds and end up stains on the ground. Anybody who was left, we “accidentally” sniped in friendly fire over the course of the occupation. And after the occupation ended, people started looking at the new interstellar allies bringing disaster relief as desperately needed friends, the few Babel groups that survived can’t get any kind of foothold. Weirdly enough, every time one of them opens their mouth to try recruiting they end up with a bullet in their head. I can’t imagine how that keeps happening.”

“That’s not the story we heard,” Keith said, casting a glance at Adam. “We were told Babel was a worldwide threat with cells in multiple countries.”

“And that you were one of the top guys involved,” Adam added. “We were told that’s probably why you coordinated bomb attacks, so you could claim responsibility and bring attention to your…”

He trailed off. As he went quiet, Keith felt some pieces click into place, and when he looked over at Adam he could tell the older pilot had just put two and two together and come up with the same thing he did.

“We’re not bait for him because he’s a Babel operative,” Keith said.

“We’re bait for him because somebody else in THEMIS wants to kill competition for the top rank,” Adam finished the thought.

“They were shooting at us because they assumed Russo was in one of those cars and they were going to kill us in case we’d already been told.”

“Look at the two of you, managing to put together a single coherent thought,” Russo praised. “And just think, all of this could have been avoided if you’d just taken the warning you were given.”

“Okay, knock it down a notch, Dollar Store Walter White,” Adam returned. “I don’t need attitude from a guy who dresses like he thinks “meninism” is a real word. Full offense, but since that warning didn’t come from our actual THEMIS contact, I had no reason to trust it. I still don’t know if I believe this story.”

“I’ve been made aware you have a gift for forcing people to tell you what you want to know,” Russo answered, unbothered by the insults. “Feel free to use it. But you’re just going to hear the same thing repeated…I have a very good reason for wanting you to know the truth.”

“Which is?” Keith prompted.

“There are still a lot of surviving THEMIS officers who joined the force for all the right reasons,” Russo answered. “People who aren’t interested in fighting for ranks and who just want to keep making sure that humanity never causes the kind of death and destruction that came with World Wars II and III. Whether you believe it or not, I happen to be one of them, and I can’t do that with a broken chain of command.”

A server came over and he paused, ordering three coffees before sending her on her way and beginning to finish up with his plate.

“THEMIS has a very secretive setup,” he said when they were alone again. “This is by design. Not knowing who everyone else is means that if you’re captured, you can’t reveal anyone else. But it also stops cliques from forming and political divides from causing friction. Only the Warchief has access to the full THEMIS roster, because they need to be able to see the whole picture and coordinate everyone. The eighteen Lieutenant Generals know who the Warchief is—nobody else does—, who the other Lieutenant Generals are, and who the ten Major Generals of their region are. That’s it.

“The Major General of the United States currently reports to no one; the North and Middle American region doesn’t have a Lieutenant General right now. I should be able to find out who they are in emergency circumstances like these, but my messages are being ignored. I can only assume that this person has already been contacted by somebody else, who has made them a very attractive offer if they help assassinate me by coordinating efforts to drop you here and lure me out. You need to get back home alive and set up a meeting between me and the Paladin THEMIS contact so that I can share the information I have.”

Adam looked over at Keith, who could only shrug. It sounded like the truth…Russo had even offered to let Adam manipulate him if he felt the need. And it wasn’t like he was asking for anybody to be brought to him, just for contact to be made. Adam shrugged and pulled out his phone, but before he could find Curtis’ number Russo leaned over and pulled it out of his hands.

“Please use your brain,” Russo requested. “Just for five minutes, for Christ’s sake. There was probably a wiretap put on your phone number the second you landed in Peru, do _not _use these phones to call anyone you don’t want killed for finding out too much. Everybody you know is in very real danger right now. Those bombs that were placed were a coordinated effort by a group of THEMIS officers trying to knock out competition, the only reason they were found was because somebody wanted them to be. The next time, they won’t be found until they explode and spread your friends across a parking lot. Go back home, and tell your contact to use Ghost channels to reach out to the Lieutenant General of the SA-1 region.”

Keith felt a little bit sheepish for not thinking of that, and Adam looked like he felt the same. Honestly, Keith was a little bit surprised that Adam wasn’t on the top of his game here, he had always been so many steps ahead of everyone else it had seemed almost creepy and villain-like. This mess with his family must have been throwing him off much more than he allowed to show. It made Keith wonder if this was also one of the things that was making it so hard for him to connect with the Blue Lion.

But that thought was pushed aside when it occurred to Keith that if Russo was telling the truth, if Babel wasn’t a thing anymore, Janet Lobo’s reasons for helping try to murder them were that much murkier and more confusing.

The man who had met them at the door suddenly appeared at Russo’s elbow, leaning down to speak quickly and quietly in his ear. Russo sat up straighter, his gaze shifting to look out the window as if checking the weather with passing interest. Keith read the room and remained still, instead of turning to look. Russo picked up his water glass, raising it as if taking a sip to block his mouth as the man who’d come to warn him slipped back into the crowd.

“Get down,” he advised.

Adam dropped immediately, needing no further prompting. Keith was already sliding out of his chair, but he felt Adam grab his shirt and pull him down with him anyway. Russo flipped the table on its side, turning it to face the window just as the glass shattered overhead. Bullets buried themselves in the wall right where his head had been, even as he pulled the gun from where he’d had it taped to the bottom of the table and sat up to return fire. Adam drew his and braced himself, trailing his aim along somewhere across the road where Keith couldn’t see as people in the restaurant started screaming and running.

Adam waited patiently for a few heartbeats, then fired twice and dropped back down behind the table.

“Nice shot,” Russo complimented, suggesting the older Paladin had hit his mark. “They probably got a tracer on one of Desi’s cars as you were leaving. We need to go now, while there’s a crowd and panic to blend in with. Are you able to get out of here on one of your ships or not?”

Adam and Keith looked at each other.

“Not,” Adam admitted. Russo didn’t even bat an eye.

“Here.”

He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket, tossing them to Keith.

“White one, far north corner of the parking lot out back,” he advised. He pointed to Adam. “I’ll be billing your stupid rich ass for it later, so be ready to buy me a new one.”

“How are you getting out of here?” Adam asked, getting up into a crouch and preparing to go. Keith followed suit.

“None of your business,” Russo answered, sliding his gun into the holster that had remained unseen at his back. “I know what I’m doing, I didn’t stay alive this long by not being able to get out of something like this. Once you start moving just don’t stop, and remember that they _will_ trace you by your credit cards.”

The gunfire came from outside again, and Keith wasn’t waiting around any longer. He pushed up from the floor, pulling Adam along with him, and made a run through the thinning crowd to the secondary entrance at the back of the building. He half expected to be shot as soon as he hit the lot, but there were a few other businesses on the back street here and civilians were all beginning to form a freshly panicking crowd as word spread to those outside what was going on in the building.

They headed for the north corner of the parking lot at a run, Keith hitting the fob repeatedly until he saw the lights blinking on a white sports car. He started to throw the keys to Adam, but Adam waved him off and darted for the passenger side.

“I can shift my vision to heat to see people hiding where you can’t. You drive, I’ll shoot.”

“Where the hell am I driving to?” Keith asked as they threw themselves into the car. He fumbled with the fob, only then realizing that there were no keys on it. “How the hell am I driving there!?”

Adam leaned over and hit the big black button that said “START” in white letters, but Keith didn’t have time to feel stupid. Everything started up, and he found himself looking at a very fancy, very unfamiliar dashboard.

He wasn’t a car driver. He had his motorcycle and he had the Black Lion. Or a pod, or a striker, or a shuttle, or pretty much anything except a car.

“Go out that way to the road,” Adam directed, pointing to the lot exit. “Turn right, then right again to get to the main road. Turn left there, and floor it if you don’t want them shooting us before we get anywhere.”

Keith had a brief moment of mind-numbing confusion before his brain began checking off all the things he recognized. This was a car, just fancier than the one he occasionally borrowed from Shiro. It had extra bells and whistles, but nothing new and strange that should be required for regular driving.

He threw the vehicle into reverse and backed out quickly, only barely not running over two people who chose that moment to run out behind him.

“Sorry!” He called out the open window as he shifted the car into drive. “Not as sorry as you almost were for running in front of a moving car, though.”

He put the window back up and followed Adam’s directions, moving at the rate of common traffic so they weren’t immediately picked out. As they turned onto the main street, now empty as everyone cleared out, he had half a second to see two men in dark military-style uniforms standing outside the broken restaurant window with guns drawn before he slammed on the gas.

Keith had not expected the car to accelerate the way it did. It shot forward, throwing him back against the seat and reminding him that he had not put on a seat belt. He suffered from this miscalculation again as the edge of the small town fell away and they once again hit the highway where Desi’s caravan had originally turned off. He took the turn a little too sharply, making Adam curse and grab the door handle to keep from flying out of his seat.

“How’s the gas?” Adam asked.

“Looks like about three quarters of a tank,” Keith answered.

“Good. When I say floor it, floor it.”

He put down his window and leaned out and Keith was about to demand to know what he was doing when he caught side of the two approaching riders in the rear-view mirror. He saw them both raise guns and heard them fire, and Adam ducked briefly.

“Don’t try to lose them, let them catch up,” Adam called as he climbed up on his seat.

“Don’t try to…what are you doing!?”

Adam had shifted out the window. He was currently sitting on the edge of the car door, as any lunatic would do, one leg hooked around the back of the passenger seat to anchor him in place. Keith heard Adam’s gun fire, then one of the riders jerked. He went down, taking his motorcycle with him.

Adam’s next shot missed, and he flattened himself against the car to avoid being hit by return fire. His third shot hit home, taking out the second rider. He carefully climbed back into the car, wincing and holding his bleeding arm.

“Should I stop?” Keith asked, eying the red beginning to soak through his shirt sleeve.

“No,” Adam answered firmly. “Open it up. I just wanted to take them out to make sure we didn’t have eyes on us while we hightailed it out of there.”

Keith obediently hit the gas. The car responded beautifully, the speedometer quickly creeping upward and the engine purring. It drove so smoothly he barely realized how fast they were going until he looked and saw they had edged up almost 300 kilometers per hour. They quickly left the town behind, moving back onto open highway with no other traffic in sight.

They went for about fifteen minutes before Adam decided they could drop back down to a normal speed. Keith kind of wanted to see if the car could go any faster, but he understood their situation; they didn’t know where or when the next gas station would come up, and hitting that kind of speed burned fuel quickly even in modern hybrids. He slowed down to the posted speed limit, keeping an eye on the rear view just in case.

“So what do we do now?” He asked.

“Aren’t you the leader?” Adam replied, wincing as he examined his arm. “What do you think we should do?”

“Find somewhere safe to look at your arm,” Keith answered. “Somewhere we can get a prepaid phone, call the others, activate this tracker Lance slipped me and have the others pick us up within an hour.”

Adam fiddled with his sleeve for a moment, then sat back in his seat without answering. Instead he turned his attention out the window, and Keith took his silence for acquiescence. But something was bothering him.

“Who warned you about this trap?” He asked.

Adam didn’t reply right away, so Keith knew the answer had to be one he didn’t necessarily want to give. He had only said that somebody had contacted him but hadn’t identified the source, which meant he was hiding something.

“Acosta-Mendez,” Adam admitted after another moment.

“Acosta-Mendez,” Keith repeated. “Why was Acosta-Mendez warning you off?”

“I don’t know any more than you do,” Adam answered irritably. “He’s worked with Russo for a while, Russo probably figured he could get in touch with me and do him the favor.”

“So if Russo is working for THEMIS and is actively working against groups like Babel, why is he working with Mendez?” Keith wondered.

“I don’t _know_,” Adam repeated. “Look, I know the guy, but I don’t _know_ the guy. He’s been friends with Janet for as long as I can remember and he was always around, but when I was a kid all I knew was that they both had boring day jobs in politics and investing. He hates my stepfather, my stepfather hates him, both of them acted like angels when she was around and argued like cats and dogs when she wasn’t.”

“Argued about what?”

Adam shrugged. “I was like five, how the hell am I supposed to remember? But I doubt it was weapon smuggling and aliens, Carlos is a frigging tax accountant. Mismatched socks give him aneurysms, I can only imagine what terrorist plotting would do.”

Keith gave up. Adam knew some, but not too much more than he did, and they weren’t going to come up with an answer by running around in circles. They needed to find somewhere safe where they could wrap Adam’s arm and hide out until they could contact the others and set off this tracker.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW and Trigger Warning (cancer)  
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[[NSFW]] tag: I'll be honest, I have literally no idea how sexy time things are rated. There's nothing terribly explicit here but I'm putting up a warning just the same because some people just Do Not Like that kind of thing even if it's not detailed. I can't even say the word "boobies" without giggling like a 12-year-old though, so don't let this tag get you excited. The section is between [[NSFW]] and [[/NSFW]] tags.  
\-----  
[[TW]] tag: This is, so far, the most extensive bit of writing I've used this trigger warning for. There is discussion about death and dying here that very frankly talks about Curtis' time running out. While it does contribute something to the emotional rollercoaster that is Curtis' and Kuro's relationship, IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO THE OVERALL STORY TO READ IT. You will lose very little by skipping it. This section is between the [[TW]] and [[/TW]] tags. 
> 
> If you choose to skip this, there is a short summary of what plot-relevant things occurred down at the end of the chapter.

Bad feelings and thin nerves were par for the course in Hunk’s life, the result of a naturally passive nature that preferred kindness and diplomacy over violence and force. But even he had to admit that the veil of discomfort that had fallen over him in the last few days was a far cry from his usual jittery demeanor.

The fact that both Lance and Pidge were feeling it too was a major red flag. Pidge, extremely logical and analytical, usually balanced out Lance’s measured chaos well. But both of them were also feeling something was off, and both of them were eager to find out what. So when seven more hours passed with no new word from Pidge and Matt, and the two of them found themselves taking the hour-long flight from Melbourne to Canberra and touring Parliament House.

It was an impressive building, or at least what was left of one. The seat of Australia’s government had been one of the targets of the Galra in the initial invasion, as had the governmental Houses of most countries. A portion of it was back in use, still smelling of fresh paint and sporting the occasional unfinished ceiling or wall and pile of building supplies. Men and women in suits maneuvered around these obstacles without even noticing them anymore, all part and parcel of living in a rebuilding, post-occupation world.

Hunk had assumed Lance would take the lead in this meeting. He was naturally bombastic and friendly, and always liked to get his face out there and point out that he was in a semi-leadership position. But in the absence of all of the actual Paladin leaders, Lance’s more somber, serious side had come out. He took a step back and let Hunk have the limelight.

It was because he was more skilled at putting people at ease and brokering deals, Hunk knew. Lance needed his own bandwidth to worry about Adam and Keith, and about Shiro and Allura and his sister and the others. So Hunk found himself doing the majority of the talking, with Lance only opening his mouth when he was asked a direct question.

It was a soft meeting. Australia was a good friend to the United States and their officials had seen the Lions before during visits over the last eight months. Lance and Hunk were here by plane and calling their Lions later only because that was what was going on with the others in other countries and they were following precedent.

Most of the questions were about Shiro’s upcoming wedding, which was quickly becoming the worldwide holiday event. Things like what kind of food had been settled on, what kind of decorations, which channels were broadcasting the event here on Earth and abroad. There were some questions about the guest list, who was coming from the Coalition for what was going to become the very first diplomatic event for the newly created Galaxy Alliance.

There were a few questions about the new Paladin who would be introduced in a teleconference with world leaders the day before the wedding. Nothing had been released about him, but Adam’s name was already all over and the only thing missing was official confirmation. The Prime Minister was impressed with his resume and pushing for a bit more information, pleased that there was an “adult” pilot with extensive military training on the team.

“No offense,” he’d said, upon realizing he had implied that the younger Paladins were less trustworthy or skilled.

It was too late for that, Lance had already been offended. But he had been too distracted to offend their hosts, giving Hunk a chance to move in and smooth things over. By the time the meeting ended two hours later the slight had been forgotten, but Lance’s patience had not grown.

They were given leave to bring their Lions into Australian air space, which they did. Thanks to the speed of the great ships they spent the next two hours visiting cities all over the country, making stops for a few minutes at a time at predetermined locations where people were able to get a look at the grand beasts for themselves. After that wound down it was time to take them out to the beach where they would wait for their pilots to get to the next location and call them.

Hunk sidestepped several questions about who co-piloted, always managing to change the subject. They weren’t supposed to confirm the “myth” that the Lions could be called or that they chose their pilots, those things were supposed to be left alone. Hunk supposed he could see why, their ability to pilot them without being inside was an exceptional secret weapon, and one they wanted to keep.

It was as they were disembarking and stepping away, just as Yellow’s and Red’s particle barriers went up, that a call finally came in from Pidge. Hunk knew that was who it was because Lance answered it by finally exploding.

“WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?”

“I DON’T SPEAK CHINESE!” Pidge yelled back, loud enough that Hunk heard it without her being on speaker. “They scanned us before they let us in to meet anybody and they took away out linguistic tech while we were in there, we had to go through interpreters!”

“I thought Matt knew Chinese!” Lance exclaimed in frustration. “Isn’t he supposed to know like four languages?”

“Yeah, apparently he can order lunch and that’s it,” Pidge said grumpily as Lance did switch over to speaker. “They finally let me bring Green in, then we had to have a bunch of guards with us while we made our stops. I’m starting to understand why we weren’t allowed to just fly in with the Lions, a lot of people here are not fans.”

“But you guys are finished?” Lance pressed. “All done until your next stop?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. We’re outside of Sydney, lock onto Red’s signature and come get us.”

As if on cue, the air behind Lance wavered. The Green Lion’s stealth mode deactivated, the camouflage that was still light years better than what was being installed on the other Lions fading away. The sea disappeared to be replaced by Green’s paw as she dropped down, sending a shower of sand everywhere and making both Lance and Hunk jump.

“Sorry,” Pidge’s voice came bough through the phone and now also through Green’s outer speaker, her laughter unmistakable.

“Thanks, I didn’t need that ten years you just took off my life,” Hunk complained as Green’s head lowered and her mouth opened to let them in.

Matt and Pidge were both still in their Garrison uniforms. He and Lance had changed shortly after their little tour had ended, and made sure their things were packed and stowed in Red and Yellow, and Lance didn’t seem fond of the fact that the two Holts still looked very clearly like military.

“You guys might want to change,” he announced, dropping down to sit on the console across from Matt. “Because we have to go to Peru.”

“Still no signs of Keith and Adam on the tracker?” Pidge frowned, holding out her hand for Lance’s phone. He handed it over so she could input the tracker frequency into Green, and get them on course to its last broadcast coordinates.

“Nope,” Hunk confirmed. He remained standing, holding on tightly to the back of Pidge’s seat as Green’s cloaking turned back on and they quickly ascended up toward space where they would be safe from violating anyone else’s sovereign airspace for at least the next few minutes. “Believe me, we’d know. Lance has been checking that phone every thirty seconds for the past like…twelve hours.”

“Yeah, because somebody has to,” Lance said defensively. “Two of our people are missing, and in case you haven’t noticed, nobody from the Garrison has contacted us to tell us.”

Until Lance said it out loud, Hunk hadn’t really thought about that. Green slowed to a stop in the moon’s orbit, floating above Earth at a distance where nobody could be watching them even if they wanted to, and when she stilled he let go of Pidge’s chair and moved to lean against the wall by Lance.

“That is weird,” he agreed. “Curtis is kind of tight-lipped about a lot of stuff, but I feel like he should’ve told us about this by now.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know,” Lance frowned. “Have you guys really taken a good look at him lately? He’s lost some weight and he always seems tired, and there was some fighting going on in private with him, Kuro, Shiro and Adam. I think he might be sick or something…he could be out of the loop right now.”

“Should we call?” Hunk asked. Even as he said it, he got the feeling that wasn’t the right answer. “Except…if we do call, and something’s going on, we’ll basically be tipping everyone off that we know something’s going on.”

“Yeah, and I think we’re all in agreement that it’s a bad something,” Lance said. “I want to go check out the last place we know Keith and Adam were, then we’ll go back to the Garrison in person.”

“That’s probably best,” Pidge agreed. “We should go snoop around before anybody realizes we broke off our tour and need to be watched.”

“Do you guys really think there’s some kind of weird conspiracy going on?” Matt asked curiously as Green’s thrusters fired up, moving her along the lunar orbit until northern Peru was in view and her sensors could hone in. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m the last person who’s going to dissuade anyone from a good conspiracy theory. But you guys seem to be the only ones on edge.”

“That’s because the Lions are synced to the Garrison’s security systems,” Pidge answered easily, her fingers flying across the keys as the image on her viewscreen zoomed in closer and closer.

Hunk wasn’t really sure what that had to do with anything. He looked over at Lance, who shrugged. Pidge saw them out of the corner of her eye and sighed.

“The Lions are linked to us,” she said tiredly, as if dealing with them was exhausting. “We know they’re conscious on some level because they chose us. If they’re linked to us and understand English, and are linked to the Garrison security system and can hear everything that goes on at the base…”

“Oh!” Hunk sat up straighter, wanting to smack himself in the head for not having put that together. “It’s not us that have a bad feeling, it’s the Lions warning us that something is wrong!”

“Or at least trying to let us know they feel something isn’t right,” Pidge answered. “Okay, here are the visuals.”

The viewscreen showed a bird’s eye view of a decrepit street lined with dirt and broken asphalt. It was impossible to see the fronts of buildings from this angle, but the fact that the cars in view weren’t moving and there were no people said this was a mostly abandoned stretch. It was night time there, the screen readout said it was a little past 8pm, but the thermal imagery picked up a higher population density about a quarter of a mile to the northeast.

“Can you take us down there?” Lance asked Pidge, straightening up. “Without tripping any military radars? It’s pretty dark, I don’t think we have to worry about the locals.”

“We’ll find out,” Pidge answered, nudging forward the accelerator.

Green left the orbital path behind, moving in on the tracker coordinates. Even after all these months, it still surprised Lance just how quickly the Lions could move, and before he even knew it Green’s night vision overlays were disappearing and leaving them a real-time view of the darkness flooding their target location. She came in for a quiet landing, almost obscenely delicate in comparison to the way the other Lions tended to drop down, touching down with barely a whisper of sound to alert anyone nearby.

“All right, let’s go check this out,” Lance ordered once the cockpit lights had dimmed. “Everyone watch your backs.”

Hunk was uneasy as he quietly disembarked behind Lance, scanning the area as best he could in the dark for anything that might be of interest. In was warm here, probably somewhere around 80 degrees Fahrenheit and comparable to what it had been in Canberra, but Pidge and Matt paused to soak in the warm air and shake off the chill from the Beijing winter.

Lance walked away from them as soon as his eyes adjusted to the starlight, intent on scouring the area. Hunk knew it was just his nerves but he didn’t like that, every step away from the group someone took sent a jolt of mild fear up his spine that made it difficult to concentrate. He finally had to return to the base of where he knew Green was standing even though he couldn’t see her with her camouflage, feeling around until he felt a great metal claw and leaning up against it.

If Pidge was right, these feelings weren’t just his. This was his Lion reaching out, maybe in the same way Lance and Pidge had said Red and Green reached out to them. Even Keith seemed to have a closer bond with his Lion than Hunk had, even if the results weren’t looking so good.

Perhaps he was the only one who wasn’t listening properly. Or perhaps this was the first time Yellow had truly felt worried enough to try and be heard.

Hunk closed his eyes, ignoring the frustrated murmurs of the others down the street. It was too dark for them to find anything unless they literally stumbled upon it, and the street here was still in disrepair from the occupation. He could practically feel Lance’s frustration on the air.

“Hey, so, I know we don’t really…talk much,” Hunk murmured, not sure if Yellow would sense what he was saying or if maybe Green would be so kind as to broadcast back to her teammate. “I guess everyone else is always just quicker on the draw to get things done and I never really needed to. But I’m getting the feeling that you’re pretty insistent about something here, so if there’s anything you want to tell me that can help us out here…I’d really appreciate it.”

He was met with silence.

Except that it was a very weird kind silence. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t being answered, it was as if a soft hum that he’d come accustomed to in the background had ceased. Like something that had been lying at rest, producing the equivalent of a relaxed subconscious purr, had quieted and started to move.

His first instinct when the cool feeling ran down his arms and washed over his hands was to tense, turning his hands over a few times in search of what could be doing it. It was when his fingers moved slightly, just the faintest tug against his own control, that he remembered what Pidge and Lance had said about the Lions guiding them.

“Okay,” he whispered, feeling more than a little nervous about this. “I did ask for this, right? So come on, buddy. Let’s see what you have to say.”

Hunk started walking. Well, he didn’t start walking, somebody else started walking in his feet. It didn’t feel threatening, he got the sensation that he could make it stop whenever he wanted, but having somebody else moving his feet was still very disorienting. He found himself walking down the street, toward where the others had gathered and were talking.

He couldn’t hear them yet, but from the tone he picked up they were frustrated. Unsurprising, all they had was a set of coordinates and no idea what to look for here.

“Hey guys?” Hunk called, now noticing the faint yellow glow that was starting to coat his fingers and spread along his hands. “Guys! You might want to come over here!”

“What the hell is that?” Matt asked, breaking away from the group to join him. “What did you touch?”

“Nothing,” Hunk shook his head slightly. “I didn’t touch anything, I think the Yellow Lion is trying to help.”

“Oh!” Pidge immediately whipped out her phone. “Let me get a recording of this! It’s never happened to me when I was anywhere I had a chance to document it!”

“Really?” Hunk frowned down at his hands. “You don’t think that’s kind of rude?”

He felt a tug downward and looked down to find he was standing on a cracked and broken stretch of asphalt. The dirt was showing underneath, more than a year’s worth of weather having pushed back the street in some place and exposed the ground beneath.

“I think he wants me to put my hands on the ground,” Hunk deduced.

“Then…put your hands on the ground,” Lance answered, looking to the others and shrugging. Clearly nobody else had any better idea than to simply obey.

Hunk sank down to his knees and took a deep breath. Uncertain of what to expect, he gently laid his palms flat on the ground and waited.

He really wasn’t ready for what happened. For a second the glow intensified, then it seemed to spill off his hands and spread along the ground around them at an almost unfathomable speed. The loose dirt along the street shot upward as if blown by a heavy wind, raining down around them again only to suddenly freeze in mid-air.

Hunk was wincing, trying to avoid dirt to the face, but when nothing hit him he slowly opened his eyes. He found the others were doing the same, covering their faces with their hands to try and save their eyes. One by one they peeked out, making sounds of surprise when they saw what he did.

All around them were human shapes, out at the edge of the circle of light. Slowly, three started to move, walking toward them from the direction of a doorway with some very familiar strides.

“That’s Keith and Adam,” Lance recognized them just as quickly as Hunk did. “Pidge, are you getting this?”

“Yes,” Pidge answered, moving closer to get a better picture on her video. “This is amazing…it’s like them being here is recorded in the ground somehow, I think Yellow’s using his Earth element to play it back.”

The three stopped. The smallest got into what looked like a car, as a larger group moved into the circle from the other direction. Keith and Lance moved away from the third—probably their flight attendant—to meet the people who had arrived.

“Maybe this was a contact Curtis sent?” Matt said thoughtfully. He had his own phone out now and was recording as well as a very large man came forward to meet Adam and Keith. After a moment, another came forward. “Or not. I think that’s a…Galra.”

There was no sound, of course, only imagery painted in floating dust. But when all hell suddenly broke loose, Hunk didn’t need sound to tell what was going on. The way Keith and Adam ran, then stopped and ducked out of the way said that somebody was opening fire from above, and the fact that one of the other shapes went down as if no longer alive said that everyone here had been caught in the rain of bullets.

“Pidge?” Lance prompted.

“On it!” Pidge was already running off, bounding back up into Green.

She reappeared a moment later, now in her armor, and took off across the street in the direction it looked like the gunfire had come from. Using her boosters, she hopped along awnings and light poles until she reached the top of the two story building, disappearing from view.

Around them, the scene continued to play out. Lance followed Adam and Keith, over to a car that looked as if the front end had been blown up. Now that they knew where to look, he started pointing out bullet holes in both the metal and the wall of the building behind it.

The activity continued for a few seconds more, then the light receded. The dust rained back down to the ground and lay still, and the glow slowly disappeared. Hunk felt full control return, getting back up to his feet.

“Well…that was interesting,” he commented, staring at his hands.

“Guys! I have a sleeve!” Pidge called, reappearing at the edge of the roof. They ran over to meet her as she used her boosters to drop back down, flipping on the light on her helmet to illuminate what she had.

It was a combat uniform sleeve, the grayish hue of a Galaxy Garrison uniform with the Garrison logo just barely visible under a thick coating of blood. It had been torn from a jacket at the shoulder.

“Makeshift tourniquet,” Matt guessed. “Somebody up on the roof got hit when the people down here shot back. Probably left the sleeve behind by accident after they replaced it with a bandage.”

“Why would the Garrison have soldiers here shooting at Keith and Adam?” Hunk asked. “Do you think maybe they mistook them for Babel soldiers or something?”

“No, I think they probably weren’t Garrison,” Lance answered. “I think they were probably THEMIS, most likely a unit based out of a Garrison base nearby like Curtis is back in New Mexico.”

“But if they were THEMIS, they had to know exactly who they were shooting at,” Pidge frowned. “Do you think they were trying to hit Keith and Adam on purpose?”

“I don’t now,” Lance admitted. “But I do know Curtis is too friendly with Adam to be letting this happen on his watch, which means he probably doesn’t know.”

“He hasn’t made any kind of contact either,” Hunk reiterated Lance’s earlier statement. “Shouldn’t he have called us by now to tell us they never made it to Argentina?”

Lance made a noise of disapproval, motioning for them to be quiet as he took out his phone. He dialed the number for the Garrison base and waited for the international call to connect, the sound loud enough to carry in the still, quiet night.

“O’Connell,” a woman’s voice answered after a moment.

“Hey, Raina? It’s Lance. Is Curtis there?”

“No, he’s at home for the weekend,” Raina answered. “I’m covering you guys for him with Riviera and Levine. But I can patch through to him if something’s wrong.”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” Lance said quickly, glancing up at the others. “I was just talking to Pidge earlier, and neither of us heard from Keith yet. Has he checked in?”

“Keith? No,” Raina replied, tapping some keys in the background. “We got word from the new plane we chartered that he and Adam boarded in Iquitos and took off right on time. They did a lot of walking yesterday and then they had their meetings as soon as they landed, he might just be too tired to answer his phone. Want me to push through an emergency call? It will make his phone ring even if he has it on silent.”

“No!” Lance said quickly. “Uh, no, that’s not necessary. I was just wondering, you know? I’ll wait for him or Adam to call me, they probably will whenever they’re ready. In the meantime, the Canberra meeting went well. Is there anything I should know before we move on?”

“Not that I know of,” Raina assured him. “Everything’s quiet here, nobody’s tipped us off to any movement anywhere. But keep your eyes open and stay alert, stay safe.”

“Sure,” Lance nodded even though she couldn’t see him. “Thanks. Bye.”

He hung up and looked at the others, frowning.

“We know they didn’t get on that plane,” Pidge said flatly. “There’s no way they would’ve just continued on as normal after what happened here. Somebody intercepted that pilot and sent back a false report.”

“Which means they don’t know something’s wrong, and Curtis doesn’t know something’s wrong,” Lance agreed. “I’m starting to feel like these meetings weren’t just set up to put us out here in harm’s way.”

“Maybe they were also trying to get you guys out of the way and leave your home base exposed?” Matt suggested.

“Oh!” Hunk suddenly had a thought. “No! I mean yes! Somebody wanted us out of there so they could take the Atlas! Nobody knew Shiro would be ready to go so soon when these things were set up, remember? He was supposed to be drawn away too.”

“Somebody in either Babel or THEMIS wants to take control of Earth’s big war ship, great,” Lance grimaced. “As much as I hate to say it, until we get a better lock on where Adam and Keith went, we need to get back to the Garrison. We still have allies left back there that might be in trouble and not know it yet.”

“Should we call Yellow and Red?” Hunk wondered. “Just in case something is going down when we get there?”

“No,” Lance said after a moment of consideration. “We’ll stick with Green. We’ll stealth in, won’t even let anyone know we’re there. If we need the Lions once we’re in, we can call them then.”

“I’ll keep her channels open and scanning for that tracker signal,” Pidge promised as they returned to Green’s loading ramp and climbed back aboard. “That way we’ll know the second Keith turns it back on.”

“We should probably also make sure we have bail money,” Matt said as they headed for the cockpit. “Not to be a pessimist, but there’s a Blade of Marmora and an overly aggressive sky jockey running loose out there without a babysitter.”

Hunk followed behind them, casting one last glance back at the darkened street as Green’s mouth closed up and she prepared to take off. He could still feel Yellow, but he’d withdrawn back to wherever it was he went when not needed, returning to just a content purr in the background.

* * * * * * * * * *

White sat sideways in the pale marble throne, at the base of the great goddess statue in the grand, pristine cathedral. The silence was kept at bay by the soft sounds of wind through distant tree branches, rainbows of light dancing on the floor as they spilled from the high, stained glass windows.

He was under a great amount of stress, and there wasn’t a lot of help to be had. He felt very much like a liar and a fraud, pretending to know answers for the benefit of the others even as he was slowly drowning.

White wasn’t exactly an aged paragon of wisdom. He was only older than Red by less than a few thousand years, and had barely a century on Black, if that. He had just enough knowledge to be painfully aware that the dam was going to break any day now and there was little he could do to stop it.

Reapers were vile creatures, but sometimes he envied their pack mentality. They pooled their knowledge and taught one another, and their Golds were far stronger than Whites because of it. White had not had the luxury of a mentor, and he did not have a teacher to turn to now in a desperate hour. He could only keep flailing blindly, and pray that something occurred to stem the rising tide.

Other Whites had come and gone before him, but they didn’t last long and he was terrified by the prospect that he wouldn’t either. The quintessence field’s dissolution was beginning to speed up, he could feel the destruction running through his bones even without being there. The Goddess they put so much stock in, the Lady of Light, was nowhere to be found, completely disappeared, and all he had to tell anybody about it was that she was currently sleeping and would wake if necessary.

White didn’t now how long that lie would last, eventually somebody was going to realize that “necessary” had long since come and gone and that the Lady hadn’t shown her face. The truth of the matter was that the gods were gone, full stop, and were not going to arrive at the eleventh hour to save them.

He was not in the mood for a visitor, and when the familiar presence made itself known at the edge of his space White intentionally ignored it. But it didn’t go away, quickly surpassing rude and spilling over into obnoxious as it insistently pressed against his wards.

White did not like Black. Although quiet, he was also haughty and somewhat full of himself. He believed that the circumstances of his birth, the pride he had been born into, made him superior to others and deserving of whatever he wanted.

Although it would be satisfying to flick him off into the ether and wound his stupid pride, White finally allowed him entrance. He did not feel like listening to his sister complain to him that he was being mean to her little boyfriend.

Black entered, finally, in his usual silent way, the picture of propriety even though he’d basically just been pounding on the door like an annoying neighbor. White summoned him a chair; not because he wanted him to be comfortable, but because he damn well wasn’t getting up and he wouldn’t give Black the satisfaction of looking down on him during a conversation.

“What?” White asked without preamble once Black was seated.

“Good morning to you as well,” Black said politely. “You’re a very hard man to get ahold of, I’ve been requesting an audience for a while now.”

“I know. I’ve been ignoring you,” White said honestly. “I’ve been a little bit busy trying to stave off the inevitable decay of reality and existence.”

“Then you should be very interested in what I have to say,” Black answered. “I could perhaps be of some help to you, and I’m sure you could use all the help you can get.”

_Oh, here we go_, White thought darkly, knowing this was the conversation he had been avoiding.

“Do continue,” he allowed, wishing with every fiber of his being that Black would not.

“As Red has probably told you, the entire point of the initial expedition into this universe was to follow you,” Black said. “Certainly, it was also to investigate the strange changes at the edges of the quintessence field, but mostly it was to seek your guidance.”

“And what would anyone need my guidance for?” White wondered.

“Ascension, of course,” Black took White’s rhetorical question at face value and answered it, coloring his voice with a concern so false it almost made White want to gag. “With things going the way they are, a single White would do well to enlist the aid of another.”

White rested his chin on one hand, eyeing the Guardian sitting across from him. At some point in his life, Black had undoubtedly been idealistic and well-intentioned, but even the best of them sometimes wandered from that road.

“You want me to train you to Ascend to a White,” he repeated Black’s roundabout request back to him. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry. I have to decline.”

Black’s look of surprise, and the flash of agitated anger that followed, was all White needed to know his decision was the correct one. Anyone who was on this path for the right reasons would already know what they’d done wrong.

“I can do this by myself,” Black said sharply. “But I’d hoped you’d see the wisdom in helping our side get stronger.”

“Would I?” White asked, nodding to the lighter strip running through Black’s long hair. “How’d you get that white patch?”

The answer to that question, of course, was failure. It was a physical mark that said Black had at one point been on the edge of Ascension but had failed to master the force of all elements combined. And White knew exactly what had happened there, because he’d felt that failure ripple outward from its source as it had occurred.

Black clenched his teeth and didn’t seem eager to share the story. White pushed himself up out of his throne and slowly paced the high-ceilinged room.

“The funny thing about Ascension, it’s the pure embodiment of that phrase “with great power comes great responsibility.” You can’t just want it for wanting’s sake, you have to want it for a reason. And it has to be a good reason, because that reason is going to be the bedrock upon which your power will stand or fall.”

Black scoffed, clearly annoyed with being lectured. White had neither the time nor inclination to continue being kind.

“Do you know why Red patronized your stupid little trip?” White asked. “Because she knows exactly who you are. She’s seen in before, long before you came along. We watched our father go down this road. Not because he was willing to sacrifice what he had to give himself to the cause of keeping balance, but just because he saw a shot at getting a leg up over others. We watched him study, we watched him try, and we watched it eat away at him as he slowly gave in to those nagging, dark thoughts that hide in power’s shadow.

“She hated it and wanted him to stop, I stood by and let it happen. Encouraged him, even. And when he inevitably succumbed to those shadows and turned on us, I was shocked.”

White unbuttoned the high collar of his robe, folding it down to show the jagged scars that ran along his collar bone and across his shoulder.

“When he was sucked almost dry by power he couldn’t control, and when he came at me, I just stood there and did nothing. My sister was the one who ultimately had to kill him to save my life, and she has every right to the anger she has that I followed in his foot steps.”

White reached Black’s chair and leaned forward, putting his hands on the armrests to block him in.

“I know why you allowed the mortal woman to talk your pilot into taking her into the quintessence field even though you knew she was under the control of a Formless. You felt that what controlled Honerva was powerful, and you wanted to see if there was any way you could harness that power for yourself. The safety of the soul you claimed to care so much for was secondary, you used all of them to further your quest of power for power’s sake.”

White leaned in closer, making sure Black was forced to look him in the eye. He wanted to make himself perfectly clear, with no way to say he hadn’t been heard.

“You aren’t me. You have the same weakness my father did, and if you continue chasing something you shouldn’t have you’re going to meet the same fate. She killed him to save my life, so be very aware…when—not if—you overload your greedy little senses and lose yourself, I will be here to return her favor.”

He pushed away from the chair and waved his hand, and that fast Black was banished out of White’s astral plane and forced back into his own. Honestly, he didn’t even deserve the courtesy of going back to his own space, he should have been dumped into Blue’s sea to flounder like a drowned rat.

The nerve, the _audacity_ of coming here and pretending he was concerned about anything but his own self-interests. White hadn’t particularly liked Black before, but now he was furious that the other Guardian would use the very real deterioration of reality as an excuse to make a power grab.

He felt it run up his spine like a river of ice, sudden and sharp and impossible to ignore. It spread quickly, up his neck and across his skin, and he had to forcibly bring himself to a halt and close his eyes.

A calming breath. Two. His mother, his sister, the pride of Reds warming themselves by the beautiful jewel-like flames of the volcanic fields. His home, his world, all of the things he held precious and longed to keep safe.

Gradually, the chill began to recede. White opened his eyes to look down at his hands, concentrating and forcing the veins of black that had scrawled themselves across his skin to retreat.

This was why someone like Black could never succeed. Selfishness and negativity of any kind was a fertile breeding ground for decay, even the slightest and most temporary impurities quickly tarnished the whole. The darkness that one had to throw off to Ascend didn’t go away, it was always there and always waiting for the smallest misstep.

That was why there weren’t any other Whites, why they didn’t last long. The very nature of free will meant that one always had to actively decide to do good. When they slipped, as they all eventually did, it was over. He was not a pure embodiment of all that was Good, he had simply managed to temporarily suppress the equivalent Evil in a way that let the pure light shine through.

That would end eventually. He would make a mistake, he would make a bad decision. He would fail, just like everyone else did, and fade into obscurity as another faceless abomination crawling around at the edges of reality feeding on the life of others. White had taken this path against his sister’s objections because he’d felt the need to balance out the bad he’d let his father do, but nobody could be completely good forever.

He sighed and returned to the marble throne, alone in the quiet cathedral, listening to the wind through the distant branches playing it’s gentle song.

* * * * * * * * * *

**[ [ T W ] ]**

**[ [ N S F W ] ]**

The hot water never really felt warm enough anymore, as if the cold of winter had seeped so deeply into his bones that it canceled out the heat no matter what he did to try and stay warm. Curtis closed his eyes and stood under the spray of the wide overhead shower, feeling the water fall heavily onto his skin like rain, and wondered if he could just call out tomorrow and stay here.

He had repeatedly been told not to use the shower, which was a walk-in set up in a way that didn’t have any doors and had a textured stone floor, because people were afraid he might fall and hurt himself. Which admittedly was not an unreasonable fear, since Curtis had been forced to lean against the wall for a few minutes twice in the half hour he’d been in here.

He heard the bathroom door open and Ryou appeared, holding a steaming mug in one hand and some clean towels in the other. He set down the mug and leaned over to adjust the heat register to ensure the bathroom temperature was satisfactory.

Curtis positioned himself so the water was hitting his neck and running down his back, watching Ryou move around the bathroom and waiting for the inevitable scolding for not just soaking in the bathtub instead of using the shower. The scolding didn’t come, instead Ryou set aside the towels and lifted his own shirt up over his head, tossing it roughly in the direction of the open hamper.

Curtis leaned against the shower wall with one arm, watching him undress in the dimmed light. The lazy movements of lean muscle beneath the vibrant colors of the back tattoo, the alluring proportions of the broad shoulders and trim waist…they were very much to his taste, even if he wasn’t going to do anything about it. Ryou was by no means perfect, he had some scars and flaws and that little birthmark he had all too cheerfully shown off after barely an hour of knowing them, but he certainly got Curtis’ blood pumping with little to no effort.

Ryou left his clothes where they dropped, like the borderline disaster he always was, and padded over to step into the shower without waiting for an invitation. Curtis moved away from the wall so Ryou could slide his arms around him, letting him pull him down for a deep kiss under the hot spray.

Shiro had tried to warn him in the beginning, making sure he was aware that Ryou had little to no interest in sexual relationships. He hadn’t been able to understand how somebody might be happy with that, or how that could ever work.

_He’s never going to…you know. Want you_, had been Shiro’s awkward warning.

Because that was what most relationships came down to. People wanted to be wanted, they wanted to be desired. They wanted to know they had a certain something that put them on a pedestal above others in their partner’s eyes. And the most common way that desire manifested itself in was sexual attraction.

But contrary to Shiro’s warning, Curtis felt very much desired, just in a different way. Ryou, notorious for aggressively defending his personal space, wanted to be touched, caressed, held. And Curtis wasn’t simply the only one he allowed to do those things, he was the only one Ryou _wanted_ to do them.

And he still acted on that desire, even in Curtis’ current state. Curtis was painfully aware he was no longer in peak physical condition or as physically attractive as he had once been. Without extra clothing to add bulk it was easy to see he’d lost a lot of weight and muscle, and his hair was thinning from his attempts with chemo before he’d given it up. His complexion was ashen and his eyes somewhat dull, and overall he just looked very _not well_.

And none of that put Ryou off at all, because his wants weren’t based on Curtis’ physical attributes. That sort of desire might not have worked for Shiro, or even for a lot of people, but it was currently working out just fine for them.

This wasn’t the first time Ryou had joined him in the shower, and by now Curtis had figured out the major rules that governed this kind of activity. His hands were not to go any lower than Ryou’s waist, he was all right with a body pressed against his but he didn’t like hands specifically touching him intimately. Ryou’s own hands in turn were not to be guided; he decided if and when he was comfortable doing any touching that could be considered sexually explicit.

But those rules didn’t necessarily mean this encounter was chaste. When Ryou finally broke the kiss to let him breathe, grabbing the shampoo bottle and then working his fingers through Curtis’ hair in slow, massaging movements, he did so with Curtis pressed firmly against the wall with his own body. The infuriating little smirk on his face said it all; he knew exactly what he was doing, and what kind of reaction he was eliciting, and he wasn’t suffering himself because he was having no physical reaction at all.

Eventually Ryou had mercy on him, helping him rinse his hair and making sure he stepped safely out of the shower and got his hands on a towel. The mug of hot tea was still waiting for him, to sip while he watched Ryou finishing up in the shower, admiring the way he looked under the running water as much as how he’d looked removing his clothes.

When Ryou finished, he wrapped a towel around his own waist and moved to stand in the doorway as Curtis went out into the bedroom. He was satisfied enough with how easily Curtis was moving to leave him alone and go back into the bathroom, while Curtis toweled off his hair and sipped some more of the tea.

He didn’t bother to dress, stretching out on the bed without pulling on the sheet or blanket. The fireplace was lit, casting a cozy warmth and light through the room, a very pleasant atmosphere to simply lie and be still and enjoy the feeling of the soft sheets under his back.

Ryou finished in the bathroom and came into the bedroom quietly, his arrival only announced by the shifting of the bed as he climbed into it. Curtis felt him crawl up beside him and then he was being kissed again, in a very pleasant turn of events.

Ryou was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, and seemed unusually emboldened by the layer of fabric between them. He moved over and settled his full weight on Curtis, pinning him down to the mattress.

“I _just_ showered,” Curtis murmured against Ryou’s lips. “If you keep it up I’m going to have to do it again.”

“Okay, cool,” Ryou answered, immediately pushing himself up. “_American Talent_ is on.”

“Whoa, hey, hold up,” Curtis caught him by the shirt and pulled him back down, making Ryou chuckle at his swift change of opinion. “Let’s not be hasty, I have nothing against two showers in a day.”

Ryou kissed him again, lighter this time and more teasing, settling back down on top of him and this time reaching down to hook one of Curtis’ legs over his hip. He pressed his hips down lightly, causing Curtis to raise his own in response and give a little moan against Ryou’s shoulder.

Slow movements, gentle friction, deep kisses. Ryou didn’t really know what he was doing, he seemed to be trying to emulate things he’d seen people doing online or on TV. Curtis had the momentary thought that if he checked his computer right now he might find twenty open porn tabs and a Word document containing very thoughtful notes, and he almost ruined the mood entirely by laughing.

Then Ryou reached down between them, and the urge to laugh turned into a different urge entirely.

He was a little clumsy, but he had the right idea. Curtis wasn’t complaining anyway, braving an attempt to pull the t-shirt up over Ryou’s head, something he seemed reluctant to allow at first but eventually did. Curtis pulled him down against him, hooking a leg back over Ryou’s hip, preferring the feel of skin against skin and trying to help set a more steady pace.

All in all, it was a very mild activity. Slow and gentle, in the soft glow of firelight, it was probably the most romantic evening Curtis could remember ever having. When it was over and Curtis relaxed back into the mattress, trying to steady his heavy breathing, Ryou stretched out next to him to lean on one arm and watch him regaining his senses.

“That did absolutely nothing for you, did it?” Curtis asked, noting his fairly indifferent mannerisms.

“That’s not true,” Ryou protested, absently checking his sweatpants to see if there was any mess on them that might require him to change. “Your face was really fun to watch. And I never expected you to make a noise like that.”

**[ [ / N S F W ] ]**

“So it was like a hands-on nature documentary?”

“A little. But I like nature documentaries.”

“You don’t have to do this kind of thing, you know,” Curtis tried to strike a tone that was equal parts light and serious. He wanted Ryou to know he was sincere, but he didn’t want to drag down the mood. “I’m a big boy, I can handle people having limits.”

Ryou leaned over to kiss him again, as if trying to reassure him that he was perfectly content with what had just transpired. Curtis still couldn’t help feeling like he’d somehow guilted him into doing something he hadn’t wanted to do, even though technically he had done nothing at all and Ryou had instigated the whole thing. But if Ryou was uncomfortable at all he certainly didn’t show it, curling up against Curtis’ side as he always did and happily dozing in the warm semi-darkness.

Eventually Curtis had to extricate himself to go clean up again. When he came back into the bedroom Ryou was sitting at the foot of the bed with the TV on, catching the tail end of that _American Talent_ show he was so fond of. Personally, Curtis thought it was dumb, but he did realize that it had a different sort of significance for Ryou. Music was an integral part of the human experience, and he was experiencing the entire catalog of human musical achievement for the first time. Even if Curtis considered the singing bad, it was still a human being making music and that was a novelty for the other man.

Curtis went to the dresser to grab something to sleep in, but when he turned back something caught his eye. It was quick, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sort of shimmer, that came and went as he slowly moved across the room. It became more visible the closer he got to Ryou, until he was sitting down on the bed next to him and could clearly see the transparent wings running down his back and draping across the bed behind him.

Gingerly, Curtis reached up to run his hand down Ryou’s back. It was something he’d done a hundred times, that spot that was currently covered by rainbow ink was sensitive and Ryou liked having it touched. As he did so he spread his fingers wide to try and brush the wings, but found that while he could see them it felt like nothing was there.

“How long have you had these?” Curtis asked, trying not to sound confused.

“Had what?”

“The…wings.” He said the second word uncertainly, because he really couldn’t be sure that was what they were. They weren’t feathered or angel-like, they looked almost like a bat’s, but the farther out from their base his eyes went the more transparent they became and he couldn’t see extensive detail.

Ryou turned his head slightly, his gaze moving away from the TV but not going completely to Curtis. He briefly looked like he spaced out, as if something was computing in the background. And it wasn’t something pleasant; it felt like Ryou was intentionally not turning all the way to look at him.

“I’m not supposed to see them,” Curtis deduced, a hollow feeling trickling into his stomach. “I only do because I’m dying. …soon?”

Ryou’s expression was one of a deer in headlights, of a man who was suddenly face-to-face with something he had thought he could handle but was finding he was ill-prepared for. It wasn’t quite panic but he was definitely at a loss.

“It’s late,” Ryou blurted out, standing up and running a hand through his hair. “You’re supposed to be sleeping. You should’ve been resting this whole weekend, I need to stop keeping you up…”

Curtis had to grab his had before he got away. There was a little bit of panic starting to bubble up in his voice now, as his body tried to go find something to do on autopilot while his brain went into a meltdown. He pulled Ryou to sit back down beside him.

“Deep breath,” he instructed, squeezing the back of Ryou’s neck. “Come on…inhale. Exhale.”

Ryou obeyed. It took a minute or two, but the moment passed and he calmed down as the surprise wore off. It was almost funny in a way, that Curtis was the one dying but was completely at peace, while Ryou, who was literally going to live forever in one form or another, was borderline freaking out.

After a few minutes Curtis stretched back out in bed and pulled Ryou along with him, settling into their usual position of Curtis on his back and Ryou stretched out half on top of him. The wings were gradually becoming more visible, a distinct shape instead of a faint shimmer, but still had no tangible feeling.

“So tell me about it,” Curtis requested after Ryou had been given a little bit of time to recover. “What am I looking at?”

Ryou sighed heavily and sat up a little, resting his chin on an arm draped across Curtis’ chest.

“This is a very small body,” he said dully. “I did become more compact when I bonded, but I’m still bigger than the body I’m in. It spills out, but it doesn’t have any real shape. What a person sees depends on how their brain processes it. But they only see it at all if their core is starting to separate from its shell.”

“You mean, the closer a person is to death, the more visible your…halo is,” Curtis clarified. He felt bad when Ryou winced, but this was the reality and mincing words wouldn’t change anything. “How long does that mean I have?”

Ryou shrugged, dropping his head down and hiding his face against Curtis’ arm.

“Could be a couple hours. Could be a day or two. But not long.”

“It doesn’t feel like that’s all I have left,” Curtis frowned. “I don’t feel like I’m dying.”

“Not everyone does,” Ryou’s voice was still muffled against him. “Sometimes things just kill silently.”

A day or two. Or maybe only a couple of hours. It was hard to really process the fact that the end was actually here, for so long he’d been able to pretend that since he wasn’t completely bedridden he was doing okay. Everyone got bouts of fatigue, right? Everyone had aches and pains. Everyone felt nauseous sometimes, or had stretches of time when they couldn’t stomach a lot of food. Maybe the way he’d been feeling lately was a little worse than any other time he’d been sick, but he didn’t feel like he was on the verge of _dead_.

“What happens now?” Curtis wondered, absently playing with Ryou’s hair and watching the firelight dance across the ceiling. “Do you know? Does it like, hurt or anything?”

“If you get hit by a truck, sure.”

“Helpful.”

Ryou let out a frustrated breath against him and raised his head back up.

“Pain is a construct of the animal nervous system to serve as a warning sign that something is wrong,” he answered. “Whether you feel it depends entirely on what signals your body decides to give your brain toward the end. Once you’re severed from it, you don’t have the capacity for physical sensation anymore.”

“So, maybe yes, maybe no.”

“Maybe yes. Probably no,” Ryou amended.

That was a little reassuring. Curtis wasn’t currently in any great pain, just the constant achiness that he’d already grown accustomed to. If he was lucky, his body would just continue to weaken without the pain getting any worse, and at least he would die peacefully.

“What happens after?” He asked. “Do I just fade into the great big blob of quintessence on this planet and then maybe have a piece of me keep going someday?”

“Personal will is a very strong thing,” Ryou answered, giving in and sitting up to properly take part in the conversation. “Nobody just disappears in an instant. Your soul can naturally hang around for a very long time, and stick around longer if you fight to. A person with unfinished business can feel unsettled enough to hang around for decades, maybe longer, and most people have a strong enough will to stick around to meet their loved ones at the end.”

“I can haunt my crazy aunt,” Curtis suggested, trying to lighten the mood a little. “Sounds kind of sweet. Are there other ghosts around to hang out with, or do I have to rattle my chains if I want attention?”

“You have a woman nearby,” Ryou said, rolling his eyes slightly at Curtis’ irreverence. “Keith has a man who’s often around. I can’t see or hear them or anything but I can feel them there, I can tell they care very much.”

There was no woman Curtis could think of who would be nearby except for his sister. The idea that she might still be here, that getting to see her again might not be just some religious placebo, was both comforting and sobering.

“So if I’m still here for a while, you won’t see or hear me?” Curtis asked.

“No. I’m alive, my senses are grounded in the physical plane,” Ryou murmured. “I can’t even see these wings you were talking about. I might be able to feel you around for a little while, but…me being here and you being there is a permanent separation.”

A permanent separation. A lot of things Ryou loved were sealed away from him on the other side of this great divide, and Curtis was soon going to be one more.

It was all the more reason why Curtis wanted so badly for him to try and consider this planet a home, where he might at least have Shiro in his corner for a good portion of that long, lonely lifespan.

A shrill beeping started, destroying the peace of the moment. Ryou sat up, looking toward the closed bedroom door.

“Is that the smoke alarm?”

“No, it’s a burner phone,” Curtis answered, maneuvering around him to get up. “I forgot I had it, so I didn’t turn it off.”

Ryou beat him to the door, and then was faster at getting down the hallway and disappearing downstairs, leaving Curtis following at a much slower pace. He knew Ryou had found the phone in his jacket pocket when the beeping stopped, and as Curtis finally reached the bottom of the stairs he could hear his boyfriend talking.

“Well, you handle it,” Ryou said sharply. “You are a trained soldier, aren’t you? He’s off today, and even if he wasn’t, it’s almost nine o’clock at night. You shouldn’t be calling.”

“Mon tigre,” Curtis said softly as he reached him, holding out his hand for the phone.

_Don’t_, Ryou mouthed, shaking his head to dissuade him from trying to answer. _Just leave it._

“Come on,” Curtis cajoled, gently pulling the phone out of his hands. Ryou gave a deep huff of distress as he turned away and brought the phone to his ear. “Duchesne.”

“O…kay, so you are there,” Gail’s voice came over the line.

“Yes,” he said curtly. “What did you need?”

“We might have a situation,” Gail answered. “We might not, but we might. The pilot we sent in to get Keith and Adam checked in to let us know he had them and they were leaving right on time, that they’d probably get to Argentina just in time for their meetings.”

“But?” Curtis prompted.

“But Lance called in to check on Keith’s and Adam’s status a little bit ago. He said he’d been trying to contact Keith but got no answer. I told him what we knew and he was fine with it, but after he got off the phone we pulled their phone trackers just to check whether they were still in their diplomatic meeting or not. Both of their trackers are showing as still being outside Iquitos, in the same area where they spent the night.”

“Any movement?” Curtis frowned.

“No. So…”

“So they’re either dead, or their phones have been tossed,” Curtis finished for her. “Any activity from the Black or Blue Lions?”

“No.”

“Then they’re not dead.” That much was a relief, though Curtis didn’t know if the Lions would also react if they were just wounded. Blue had sought out Adam directly only when he’d been near death. “Who hired the pilot?”

“Our contact down in South America,” Gail replied. “The one Olivia put us in contact with. But Olivia isn’t answering on her regular line or the burner.”

“She said she might have to go dark,” Curtis mused. “Something is very, very wrong.”

Of course, Gail undoubtedly knew that. She wouldn’t be using their own burner phones unless she didn’t feel safe using their regular ones.

“Okay, don’t panic,” Curtis said, moving back through the house with Ryou trailing after him. “Keep everything going as normal, don’t let anybody watching see that we think something is up. I’ll be there shortly.”

“Got it. Be careful.”

Curtis didn’t answer. As he stepped back into the bedroom he hung up the phone, heading for the dresser to set aside the pajamas he’d picked out in favor of normal clothes. Ryou was right on his tail, pushing the drawer closed as soon as he opened it.

“There’s no way you think going in there is a good idea,” Ryou said sharply. “Did you not listen to a word I said to you earlier?”

“Mon tigre…”

“You could be dead in a few hours,” Ryou kept going. “You most likely _will_ be dead in less than a day. Everything you do to stress your body is just going to burn even more of that time away.”

“I hear you,” Curtis said, momentarily giving up on the drawer. He put his hands on Ryou’s shoulders, turning him to face him. “And I do understand. Time’s up, this can’t be my problem anymore no matter how bad it looks. These are all capable people, and they have to handle it without me whether they’re ready or not because they don’t have a choice. I’m going to go in, take them my computer, give them my files, and then come home.”

“Promise?” Ryou asked. He was so distraught right now, Curtis would have promised him the moon if that was what he’d requested.

“I promise,” Curtis assured him. “Get dressed and come with me, please? I’d like to reach the end comfortable here at home, but if it happens in the next few hours I want you to be with me.”

Ryou wilted, but gave in and nodded. He padded out of the bedroom, back down the hall to the spare room hey pretended he slept in as if everyone didn’t already know they shared a bed.

When he was gone, Curtis dropped down to sit on the edge of the bed. He had been trying not to show it, but he was winded from that trip up and down the stairs. It was one more stark warning that time was ticking, and that the sooner he could get his files to Gail and step out of the picture the better off everyone would be.

**[ [ / T W ] ]**

\--------

Summary for Trigger Warning skip: Kuro and Curtis are spending an evening getting snuggly when Gail calls on an unregistered burner phone Curtis has. She tells him that the pilot for the plane they chartered called in earlier to say that Adam and Keith made it to the airport and left for Argentina, and that they would arrive just in time to go to their meeting. She relates the fact that Lance called to ask about Keith, and that something didn't sit well so they checked their own trackers and found them both still north of Iquitos. Curtis deduces that the two of them must have ditched their phones to get rid of the trackers. The conversation reveals that the pilot they hired was suggested to them by their South America contact, who Olivia got them in contact with. However, Olivia is not answering either, indicating that she's also in trouble. Curtis promises them he will be into the office shortly. After he hangs up, he promises Kuro that he's only going in to give them the files he has and then recuse himself from the entire mission, so he can return home and he can spend the time he has remaining there. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FYI to all: inconveniently, I've had to mark my work as For Registered Users Only, which means you have to be logged into AO3 to read. I've temporarily unmarked this to make the update accessable. 
> 
> Why: there's currently an unauthorized pocket reader app (now removed from Google PlayStore but I'm not sure about the Apple store) that acts as a user interface for reading AO3. This would be fine, except:
> 
> \- The app has an option to 'tip' the creators for the upkeep of the app
> 
> \- It had ads, which = monetization
> 
> \- It offered a subscription to a premium version
> 
> Unlike AO3, the app maker does not have the financial purchase and donation available, or proof of how much is made and where the funds go. Regardless of how much or how little someone may make from an app, THEY ARE MAKING AN INCOME FROM FREE FANWORKS. 
> 
> Marking for registered only forces all app users to log in, which doesn't stop them entirely but does add a wall of inconvenience to them. 
> 
> And inconvenience to all readers, so please don't use these apps. I'll stop requiring log in to read as soon as I'm sure it's no longer available at all.

The air was damp with moisture carried upward from the sapphire waves crashing below, ebbing and flowing around the outcropping of crystal on which Blue sat. Her usual fashion of brightly colored and ripped fabrics was replaced by a soft leather tunic beneath a chest plate made of layered wooden plates. Her feet were tucked under her, keeping the equally soft leather boots from getting wet, her wooden helmet sitting by her side.

Behind her was The Stretch, the small expanse of space where the little, cobbled-together pack had stretched out their own portions of the astral plane to meet, where the others were lounging in the cool shade of Green’s copse of trees.

To the right of this were the rolling dunes of Yellow’s desert plain, and to the left was a rocky drop-off down into Red’s lush, volcanic valley.

Back behind the copse of trees, there was nothing.

Once there had been a glassy sea of starlight, Black’s crystalline cavern of solidified sky, but now there was a stretch of emptiness. Once, Black had been far more open and welcoming. He’d been good-natured and happy, if a little bit stiff and formal. Though it had happened too slowly for them to really notice, that had changed over time. The others had all grown uncomfortable with visiting his space, and eventually he had removed access to it entirely.

“How is he?”

Red’s voice sounded from behind her. Red, fiery and combative, uncertain and insecure, moving in her usual quiet way designed to take up as little space as possible.

That insecure aspect of her personality had grown more pervasive as Black had become more snappish. Blue had half a mind to go slap him across the face and actually give him something to be snappish about.

“Up,” Blue answered Red’s question, opening her eyes. “Down. Left. Right. He’s all over the place. I keep reaching out but he’s just not paying attention. I know I promised to give him time and all, but would it really be going back on my word if I only body slammed him a little bit?”

“You ought to just give up for a little while,” Black said boredly from where he sat up against a tree, idly flipping through some pages of something he’d undoubtedly written himself and thought was just _so _artistic. “If he’s ever ready, he’ll let you know.”

“He’s not safe,” Blue answered, looking at him out of the corner of her narrowed eyes. “Things could go south very quickly. I’m not bothering him, but now that he’s close enough for me to watch I fully intend to intercede the second I feel like he’s bitten off more than he can chew. He’s already gotten shot. Plus he’s got Keith there, so I’m doing double duty.”

“Keith is fine, he doesn’t need you watching him,” Black said indifferently.

Blue looked over at Red, who only shrugged helplessly. These days, if Black didn’t want to be useful, there was no forcing him.

“Is he?” Blue asked. “So you’re well aware that he got shot during a getaway and only realized it after they had a chance to stop?”

Black said nothing. He didn’t even look up from his manuscript. It was his way of pretending that the question hadn’t been asked at all, so he didn’t have to state that he either had known and hadn’t cared or hadn’t been paying enough attention to know.

“Dump him,” Blue advised Red, making sure she said it loud enough for Black to hear. “He hasn’t been worth half a Sentinel since his quintessence field trick with Zarkon and Honerva knocked him three miles south of stupid.”

Black didn’t take the bait. Blue suspected it was because he knew she could and would knock what few braincells he had left loose if he pushed her far enough. She was a lover more often than a fighter, but sometimes love had to get tough.

Over in the trees, Green continued lazily lacing flowers together in a crown atop Yellow’s head, while the latter scribbled out some kind of notes on something he was working on. After a moment, Black sighed and closed his book.

“Perhaps we should just let them all be,” he said.

“Let who all be?” Green asked absently.

“The mortals.”

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

That stopped Green’s fingers from working. She tilted her head to let her massive ponytail of curls fall out of her view, and for a moment Blue thought she was about to make him very sorry for saying any such thing while she was wearing her stealth leathers instead of heels and a corset.

“I beg your pardon?” Green said politely.

“I said, perhaps we should—”

“I heard you,” Green interrupted, obviously offended at the mere thought that she should abandon Katie and her family. “I was inviting you backpedal.”

“We’re not just leaving people to die,” Red said sharply, turning back to the trees with her hands on her hips. “We’ve been the only thing standing between the full takeover by the Galra and galaxies full of innocents. Those Lions are the most powerful weapon this universe has.”

“When we maintain them,” Yellow commented, still scribbling furiously. “They’re not going to be, if those stupid mechs of Honerva’s keep upgrading. I wish I could figure out the mechanism for how they absorb all our attacks and throw them back at us…how does a machine just suck in all the alchemy we throw at it…?”

“Love,” Green addressed him gently.

“Hm?”

“Put the engineering down for a bit, we’re being mad at Black right now.”

“Oh,” Yellow folded his papers in half and clipped them with his pen, dutifully setting them aside as Black rolled his eyes. “Sorry.”

“Look, I want to go home, okay?” Black finally admitted. “I miss the quintessence field. I miss my pride, I miss my family, I miss my cave. We came here to find the White One and see if he would come back to help fix the things going wrong. Well, we found him, and he’s obviously not interested in coming back. Let’s just go.”

“You have another trans-reality comet handy?” Blue asked.

“We don’t need one,” Black answered. “We can take the Lions while the pilots aren’t around, we don’t need them to go either. They’ve got the coordinates for the rift gate, we can use that to go back.”

Everyone else fell quiet. Like Blue, they were undoubtedly realizing he was right. For thousands of years they’d been here, fighting because they were basically trapped here and had no alternative. But as annoying as Black was lately he was completely right about this…now that Lotor’s rift gate was fixed and complete, they could return home.

“So what are you saying?” Yellow was the first one to speak. “That we just leave? Let this universe collapse in on itself as whatever Formless is latched to Honerva sucks it dry?”

“Why, what’s the other option?” Black asked him. “Try to fight it, five against an army? Die here? Really die, have formless suck us dry and destroy us? For what? One universe out of millions. There are plenty of other universes out there that are far better than this one if you really want something to sacrifice yourself for.”

“If White thought this could be fought from the other side, he would have said so,” Red protested. “He’s reckless, and he’s an idiot, but he wouldn’t ask us to risk ourselves if he thought there was any other way.”

“White has been addled by the mortals here,” Black scoffed. “The Alteans worshipped him as a god and he’s still not over them being gone. Now there are a couple colonies of them left and he sees new worshippers in his future, that’s where his interest is.”

“That’s not true!” Blue felt her ire finally bubble over. “He’s not just some vain do-nothing, he knows our best bet at winning is to beat the enemy here in this universe before it grows big enough to start flooding into others! That’s why he wants us to fight this war on these grounds, and that’s why he wants us to consider bonding to gain an advantage.”

“An advantage,” Black gave a humorless bark of laughter. “There is no advantage. Look at everything we’d be giving up if we listened to him…our homes, our lives, our past, our power. What are we really supposed to gain by being condensed into some tiny, frail little body that will only live as long as something in this monstrous universe doesn’t actively kill it? What, exactly, do we gain if we die in a fight and then have to float around for a few decades waiting to be reborn just so we can try again? And God, that’s not even taking into account what he wants us to bond with.

“Yellow, do you really want to wake up one morning and find yourself with a tiny brain unable to comprehend the advanced sciences of our people? Green…are you looking forward to going through being a teenager again? Here, no less, among primitive creatures who would rather stare at your body than listen to what’s coming out of your mouth? Blue, do I even need to start on your prospects?”

“No, I’m well aware of them,” Blue answered coolly. “And I, for one, would love to be able to force you to take a long walk off a short pier just by telling you to.”

Black shook his head in disgust, rising and scooping up his book.

“I love Keith,” he said with a huff. “But not more than myself. I don’t love this universe more than I love home. If you all really want to waste your existence then fine, I’ll remain and fight with you until you get your mortal little bodies crushed, but then I’m going home. I’ll carry word of what became of you to your prides.”

He disappeared in an overdramatic swish of his robes, leaving them all staring after him.

“Did…did we decide at some point that we were actually going to do that?” Yellow asked nervously.

“We didn’t decide anything, he’s just in a mood,” Red answered darkly. “And we shouldn’t make any snap decisions. But we do have to sit down and really discuss what’s going on, and soon.”

She sighed and turned back to look out over the water, her hands back on her hips. Blue rolled her legs out from under her and turned to face back toward the others completely, reaching out a foot to lightly nudge her.

“I’m serious,” Blue insisted. “Dump him. And then consider the possibilities. If you do decide you’re going to bond to a mortal core, think of all the universes worth of men you’ll have to choose from.”

“Lance has a partner,” Red corrected her. “That’s not going to go away. He’s not going to just disappear and leave me walking around in his body, I would become one person with memories of two lives. His feelings and mine would be one. So try to remember that when you’re considering whether to take this plunge. If you do, you’re going to go from a single and available blue Guardian to a foul-mouthed Nixa man with a husband.”

“If you don’t think I qualify as foul-mouthed now then I don’t think you’ve been listening,” Blue said, looking up at the sky. “And anyway, I’m sure there’s worse things to be than married to someone who likes pineapple on pizza. Not many, but probably like…two or three.”

She said it lightly, in spite of the heavy subject matter. Black was right, if they did as White suggested they would never get to go home again. And while they would technically be two entities becoming one, they were the ones who had stepped out of their world and into this one. They would be binding themselves to physical forms that had names, jobs, lives. Who they were now would become their past, each of them would be moving forward with a different face and a new name.

Maybe…it wouldn’t be too bad. None of them were willing to go running home and leave this universe in ashes, but as long as they stayed it was only the six of them. Five, if Black decided to abandon them and run off. So perhaps having a name and a body and a world to live in, surrounded by other people, wouldn’t be so bad.

That clone was a bonded Reaper, right? And he seemed to be doing okay. He had abandoned that ship and decided to stay here at any rate, so it couldn’t be all bad.

Blue ran a hand through her short hair and stretched as Red stepped away to go sit with the others, turning back around to face the sea. She closed her eyes and turned her gaze back into the distance, continuing to keep tabs on her problem pilot and his equally unpredictable little sidekick.

* * * * * * * * * *

**_Years ago_**:

Adam sat in the quiet hospital lounge, staring off into space. He didn’t know if he’d been here for one hour or ten, the dark hours of midwinter stretched out so long his internal clock lost its ability to keep track, and his phone had been lost somewhere in his earlier panic. It didn’t help that the small room was on the inside of the building, looking out only to a narrow courtyard seven floors down that he couldn’t really see to gauge time by the activity of people coming and going.

He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He’d spent so much time wishing people would stop giving him orders and forcing him into a mold, now that the important decisions were up to him all he wanted was an adult to point him in the right direction.

Adam had panicked and called Curtis when everything had first happened, but of course there had been no answer. He had graduated last year and was on his first deployment, although he checked in on Adam like clockwork there was no way to reach him between calls. He had debated giving in and calling Iverson, but it was Christmas break and it was the middle of the night, even if he decided to do that he couldn’t call until morning.

He stood up and paced the room, his footfalls muted by the carpet and sound-dampening acoustics. He couldn’t wait too much longer before he did something, somebody had to be in charge.

Adam had given the hospital staff Rosa’s insurance card and ID, and as much information about her as he could come up with. But although he had lived with the woman for four summers and all of the holiday breaks in between, he knew very little about her.

She wasn’t secretive, he’d just never bothered to ask. He’d treated his live-in caretaker like a burden, just one more annoyance there to tell him when to go to bed and to eat his vegetables and to stop watching so much TV. Now, while she was in surgery and might not come out of the operating room alive, he couldn’t remember if she had children or siblings or who her parents were. He didn’t know who to call, who should be here.

Out in the hall he heard voices, but at first he didn’t pay any attention to them. This was a waiting area, people had been coming and going out there the whole time he was here. He tuned them out like every other noise, only really taking notice when they stopped nearby and continued to talk.

After a moment, Adam hauled himself out of the chair he was slunk down in and quietly pulled open the door, peeking out into the hallway. He recognized the nurse who had initially brought him here, she was speaking to a tall man who was facing away from Adam. He wore a long, heavy coat, as if he’d just arrived and come inside, the Portuguese accent identifiable even though the two were speaking quietly.

“Thank you,” the man said finally, turning away from the nurse. “I’ll leave my phone number at the front desk.”

The nurse left and Adam stepped out of the room. He hated how pathetic the flood of relief made him feel, how helpless and unprepared the real world had decided to show him he really was. Simon, his mother’s business partner and a friend of the Lobo family, put a hand on his shoulder and steered him back into the waiting room, closing the door behind them.

“How did you know I was here?” Adam asked, turning to go back to the chair where his things were. He tried to sound aloof, though in reality he was trying to hide the fact that he’d been sitting here crying like a baby. “I didn’t call anyone.”

“Intuition,” Simon answered. “And the doorman at your building called to say you came home panicked this afternoon then had him call you a cab here after you dropped off some things and ran back out with a backpack. What happened?”

Adam groaned, rubbing his face with both hands. He didn’t know how to explain what had happened because he didn’t know either.

“Did you talk to a doctor?” He asked instead. “I didn’t know who to call…”

“I talked to a nurse familiar with what’s going on, yes,” Simon assured him. “And I already called Rosa’s daughter, she met me here. Come on, you’ve been here for a while.”

Before Adam could protest, Simon scooped up the coat laying over the side of a chair and held it up for him to slide his arms through, as if he were a young child who couldn’t manage it. Normally Adam would have scoffed and grabbed it, but he wasn’t in a very independent mood at the moment. Once his coat was on, Simon picked up the backpack on the chair and slung it over his own shoulder while Adam was messing with the zipper. He put a hand on Adam’s shoulder again and steered him out of the waiting room, down the hallway to the elevator.

It felt like a weight lifting from his shoulders. Somebody was here who could handle this, somebody was here who knew what to do.

“How did you get here so fast?” Adam asked once they were in the elevator and on their way down. Simon gave that little half smile that always graced his face when he was about to be evasive.

“I was in the area.”

“Doing what?”

“Things. Stuff. Shenanigans.”

“Tomfoolery?”

“Yes. Also some hijinks, and a little bit of mischief,” Simon agreed. “Are you all right? Did you get hurt?”

Adam didn’t think that was a very important question, given that he was up and walking around while Rosa was on a surgical table. But he lifted his left arm as they stepped off the elevator and rotated it a bit, demonstrating the ache in his shoulder.

“I tried to grab her, but I hit a patch of ice before I reached her,” he admitted. “Probably nothing a little bit of heat and rest won’t fix.”

Simon nodded and pointed Adam to a chair as they reached the lobby, leaving him there to go up to the front desk. As he had promised the nurse, he left his contact information and discussed a few more presumably adult issues, then came back to get Adam and herd him out the doors.

It was cold out, enough that Adam pulled his coat closer around him and buried his face in the faux fur collar, following Simon quickly through the parking garage to where the sleek silver car was waiting.

Adam knew it was a rental as soon as he saw it. Simon wasn’t the kind of man you’d expect to have billions of dollars in investment assets at his fingertips just from looking, and the only time he drove flashy cars was when he was traveling and renting. The military man in him liked to stick to quieter, less attention-drawing vehicles.

As soon as they were inside Simon cranked up the heat, turning the vents to face Adam and turning on the seat warmers. Adam finally got a chance to see the time thanks to the clock on the dashboard…it was almost one-thirty in the morning.

“When was the last time you ate?” Simon asked.

It took Adam a moment to remember. So much of the afternoon and night was a blur, yesterday seemed like ancient history.

“Brunch,” he said glumly, sliding down in his seat. “We were out shopping when it happened.”

If he expected prying questions, he didn’t get them. Instead Simon took out his phone and made a call, speaking in Spanish as he asked somebody on the other end what was available. There was a moment of silence while he waited, then he requested “two of each” and said he would be there shortly. After he tucked the phone away he started up the car, turning off the dome light and dropping the cab into darkness as they crept carefully out into the very light traffic.

“How’s school?” Simon asked.

It was a ridiculously mundane question, given the circumstances. Honestly, it was a ridiculously mundane question given his situation overall. Adam shrugged.

“Fine.”

“Have you made any friends who haven’t already graduated?”

“Some.”

“Are you still having trouble in Literature?”

“Sometimes. I don’t like the books they assign,” Adam grumbled. “I don’t know who decided what books were classics, but judging by the content I’d say nasty old perverts and racists.”

“American classic literature has always been mostly tasteless,” Simon agreed amiably. “But there are some very diverse, lesser-known authors worth a read.”

Adam shrugged and let the car fall into silence. Part of it was sheer exhaustion; nerves, fear, and uncertainty took a lot out of a person. He wasn’t so much averse to conversation as finding it difficult to carry one.

Simon turned off the main road and into an unfamiliar neighborhood. He pulled up in front of one of the only houses that still had lights on, with the blinds pulled up as if to assure people that visitors were welcome. Adam could see the bright, haphazard Christmas decorations inside, and three men playing what looked like cards or dominos.

Simon left him there to go up to the house, where he knocked twice and was quickly greeted by a pleasant looking Spanish woman in a messy apron. She disappeared back inside and came out with a plastic bag, which she passed to Simon as he handed her some bills.

Adam was familiar with this. He’d never done it before himself, but Simon often did during his occasional visits. The only places to get real, authentic ethnic foods were the local communities; the Spanish mothers and Italian fathers and Russian aunts who cooked large batches of unapologetically flavorful food and made extra money offering servings of the day’s meal to late-night workers and busy single parents in the neighborhood.

Simon returned and the car was filled with the tempting scents of cumin and star anise. Adam’s stomach growled in spite of himself, but he took the bag and held it on his lap without rifling through it. Simon pulled away and went around the block to turn around, and within a few minutes Adam once again recognized the way back to his apartment building.

The streets were quiet and empty, the cheerful Christmas decorations in office windows and on storefronts a stark contrast to the gloomy night. Adam let his head slide down until it hit the car window.

“We got in a fight over the tree,” Adam said glumly, unable to keep his ordeal quiet any longer. “She wanted me to help pick out Christmas ornaments and I wasn’t in the mood. She told me to lighten up, and I told her to go play in traffic.”

Adam swallowed thickly, recalling the screeching sounds of brakes being hit too late and the sickening way Rosa had been lying in the street.

“And…she did.”

It obviously sounded crazy, but Adam knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was responsible somehow. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew. It wasn’t just some feeling of guilt for saying something horrible either, in the moment he’d said it he’d really wanted her to just shut up and go away. And she had.

“Hm,” was the only reply that Simon gave. It was neither accusatory nor patronizing, just a neutral sound to acknowledge what Adam had said.

Instead of continuing the conversation, Simon turned on the radio. The cheerful sounds of Christmas music filled the air, letting Adam stare absently out the window and saving him from having to revisit yesterday’s tragedy further just yet. He knew he would have to give the older man more details at some point, but he just couldn’t right now.

The warmth from the heater and the sound of the radio worked together to make his eyes heavy, and he was startled out of a doze when the car shut off unexpectedly. Adam rubbed his eyes and blinked around, realizing they were in the garage of his building.

He yawned widely as they climbed out of the car, zoning out and forgetting he even had a bag until he noticed Simon was carrying it again in the elevator. When they reached the apartment door he fumbled out his keys and opened it up, and the keyring was immediately plucked out of his fingers.

“Go get a shower,” Simon ordered, strolling across the great room to set everything on the kitchen island like he owned the place. He didn’t turn on any of the apartment lights, only the single light over the stove that lit everything with a gentle glow instead of a glare. “Then come eat something.”

“I don’t feel like showering,” Adam grumbled, going to the fridge for a soda. “I’d rather eat first.”

“I didn’t ask,” Simon pointed out. “You smell like antiseptic, please go get a shower.”

Adam rolled his eyes as he cracked the can, giving Simon a sideways look. He was not in the mood for this.

“So, what, you’re going to come in here and start bossing me around too?” He asked. “You’re not my dad.”

Although not a man who liked to stand out, that didn’t mean Simon was a slob. Under the coat that he now shrugged off he was wearing tailored trousers and a dark blue silk shirt with a tie, and looked more like the CEO that he was than any kind of brawler. But when he straightened up he was over six feet, and he was very fit. When he came to stand in front of Adam with his arms crossed, Adam immediately second-guessed his attitude.

“I’m not Rosa, I will fight you and win,” Simon made clear. “That’s the first thing. If you have no respect for me as a child to an adult that’s fine, but respect the fact that I can fold you into an accordion if I want to. Capiche?”

Six different sarcastic replies came to mind, but Adam’s common sense stopped them from coming out of his mouth.

“Capiche,” he mumbled against his soda can.

Simon narrowed his eyes and stared him down for about ten seconds, stopping only when Adam began to squirm under the scrutiny. He stepped away and went back to taking food out of the bag on the counter.

“I’m not trying to boss you around. You want me to validate everything I ask with reasons? Fine. You’re a kid who’s going through something bad. A shower and fresh clothes will help you draw a line between yesterday and today. It’ll help you get it into your head that the accident is over and help you start moving forward. The hot water will also help your arm and anything else you might not realize is sore yet. So again, please go get a shower. I also suggest you do so with the lights dimmed. It’s two in the morning and bright light will just wreak more havoc with your senses. Now go.”

He put his hands on Adam’s shoulders again and pushed him from behind, steering him down the hallway to the bedrooms. Adam pointed him toward his own bathroom, where Simon finally released him once he was pushed through the doorway. The older man didn’t even give him a chance to go get fresh clothes, just pointed him to the shower and flipped off all the lights except the one just outside the door in the hallway.

It was slightly weird, but Adam had been through weirder. And, if he was being honest, the faint light coming into the dark bathroom from the hall was much easier on his tired eyes, as Simon had promised. He grabbed some towels from the small closet and a minute later was tossing his clothes on the floor and stepping under the hot spray of the shower.

He was immediately glad he had obeyed. His whole body felt clammy and cold, the heat of the shower was like a warm, welcome hug. His arms and hands still felt almost gritty from the way he’d slid to his knees in the street at Rosa’s side, and it felt good to finally get clean again. He stayed under the running water for longer than he’d meant to, until he lost track of time and his stomach finally reminded him that he needed to eat.

When he stepped out and grabbed a towel, his dirty clothes were gone. A pair of his sweatpants, some socks, and a t-shirt were folded up on the sink, meaning Simon had grossly overstepped his boundaries and gone through Adam’s room.

Adam wanted to be cross. He wanted to be angry that somebody would go through his personal space without asking, but to be perfectly honest he was almost grateful for the intrusion. One of those annoyances that most teenagers had to put up with, Adam found this instance almost nice. He dried himself off and dressed, toweling off his hair as he padded down the hall.

Simon was sitting on the sofa with the TV on. His tie was gone and his collar unbuttoned, and his sleeves were rolled up. He’d kicked off his boots and had his feet up on the coffee table—something Rosa would have had a fit about if Adam tried to do it—and had food and plates laid out.

Adam walked past him to the laundry room to lay out his damp towels to dry. While he was in there he spotted the sleeve of his hoodie hanging out of the closed hamper and started to pull it out, but he stopped when he found it a bit damp. His fingers came away faintly smeared in nearly-dried red, which made him drop the sleeve completely and pull his hand back.

Gingerly, he slowly lifted the hamper lid, only to immediately slam it closed again and quickly step back away from it.

His clothes were still covered in Rosa’s blood. Now that he was no longer in a daze and they were no longer on his person he could see that, and there was no way Simon hadn’t seen it.

Now it was much more clear why he’d wanted him to shower immediately, and why he had advised near-darkness. Adam wasn’t sure he would have stayed completely calm if he’d actually seen himself in the bathroom mirror, or watched any smears of red running down the shower drain.

He was suddenly all the more grateful for Simon’s presence.

Adam backed out of the laundry room and returned to the living room, now noticing that a fire had been lit as well. The room was warm, more to Adam’s heat-loving taste than the sixty-degrees-is-fine attitude of the locals here, which made sinking down onto the sofa next to Simon all the more welcoming.

“Getting kind of comfortable there,” Adam noted, finally opening the containers and starting to put food on his plate. “I’m guessing you’re not going back to your hotel.”

“You’re not staying here alone,” Simon answered without looking away from the TV.

“I’m not a baby, I’ll be fine until school starts back up after New Year.”

“You’re fourteen, you can’t be left for days without supervision.”

“I’m sixteen,” Adam said testily. “Is Janet still getting my age wrong?”

Simon rolled his head sideways against the back of the sofa to give Adam an annoyed look. He pursed his lips, like he wanted to make a sharp comment in reply, but was physically fighting to stop himself from saying something he would regret.

“…sixteen.” It was like Simon had to force out the word. “Still too young to be left for days without supervision.”

Adam scoffed and started shoveling rice into his mouth. His stomach gurgled loudly, and they both pretended not to notice it. Simon left him to eat instead of distracting him further, watching the Hallmark Christmas special he’d settled on while Adam was in the shower.

“Are you going to tell my mom?” Adam asked when he finally slowed down on eating. Simon raised an eyebrow.

“Of course.”

“Do you really have to, though?” Adam wondered. “She’s kind of a bitch, it’s not like she’ll care. She’ll just saddle me with somebody else.”

“She’s not kind of a bitch, she’s queen of the bitches,” Simon corrected. “Empress, even. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care. Your mother’s work puts her in a tricky situation, menino.”

“Yeah, I know,” Adam said bitterly, shoving another chunk of chicken into his mouth. “Can’t have the out-of-wedlock kid ruining your public image. But that spoiled brat she lugs around is fine and dandy.”

Adam wasn’t even going to pretend he liked Enzo. He’d been around the older boy once or twice when he was younger, but they didn’t really know each other and Adam doubted Enzo had ever been told he was Janet Lobo’s son. But he saw enough on TV and the internet to know Enzo was one of the biggest jerks in history, constantly getting into trouble and basically being a PR nightmare for his parents. But oh, that was okay. Apparently just existing was a bigger sin than publicly being a demanding, self-centered rich boy with a criminal record.

Simon sighed heavily through his nose, letting his head fall back against the sofa.

“Listen…your mother knows you’re not happy. She knows that and she doesn’t like it. But she can’t change it. She showers you with money because that’s the only thing she’s able to do.”

“Uh huh,” Adam snorted. “Well money doesn’t make this all better.”

“She knows that, too,” Simon answered. “She knows this is fucking you up, okay? She knows. She knows this is the kind of situation that people don’t recover from easily, maybe never recover from, and she knows you’re never going to forgive her for it.”

“Then why is she _doing_ it?” Adam demanded. “I get wanting to keep me a secret. I get sending me away to school. But she can’t even be bothered to visit more than once a year for five minutes? She can’t let me call her or email her, or even talk to her on holidays? If she knows it’s wrong then she shouldn’t do it!”

“It’s not that simple,” Simon sighed again. “Sometimes things happen, and all of the choices you have available are the wrong choice. Sometimes the right choice just isn’t an option.”

“Whatever,” Adam mumbled, tossing his empty plate on the coffee table.

He grabbed one of the sofa pillows and hugged it close, burying his face in it except for his eyes so he could stare through the TV without really watching what was on it. He hated everything about this and he kind of wanted to cry, but he refused to do that with an audience. Next to him, Simon turned his eyes back to the TV, but Adam got the impression he wasn’t really watching it. The uncomfortable silence went on for a few minutes, until Simon finally picked up the remote and muted the sound.

“Look, I’m going to tell you something, okay?” He said tiredly. “Something important. And you’re going to tell no one, got it? You’re going to take it to your grave with you.”

“What?”

“Do you understand that this isn’t something you can ever tell anybody?” Simon pressed.

Something in his tone told Adam to take this very seriously. He didn’t know what kind of secret was so bad that it couldn’t be shared with anyone at all, but he could feel the heaviness of it. He even hesitated for a moment, wondering if he really wanted to know, before he nodded. And even when he did, Simon was reluctant to speak.

“Enzo isn’t your mother’s son,” he said finally.

“I’m sorry,” Adam didn’t think he’d heard right. “What?”

“You heard me,” Simon replied. “He’s Carlos’ son, that’s why he lives with them. And Sophia’s not his daughter. Carlos thinks she is, but if he knew she wasn’t then Janet wouldn’t risk keeping her there either.”

Those words were like a punch in the face. Sophia, his little sister, didn’t even know he existed. Adam had assumed that she and Enzo were both the children of his mother and Carlos, to find out that one belonged to each…Adam had always known his family tree was weird, but this was just making it weirder.

“Enzo knows he’s not Janet’s,” Simon continued when all Adam could do was stare at him in shock. “He has no trust fund, no access to your mother’s money, no cushy job waiting for him without having to work for it. That “spoiled brat” gets to be known as her son in the public eye, but he gets nothing else. He’s also nosey…he knows there’s another kid out there who’s on the Lobo family trust while he’s not, and he’s pissed.”

“He’s not on the family trust?” Adam asked, raising an eyebrow. Now that was an interesting development. Whatever Adam wanted he got, all he had to do was send a request through the appropriate channels and the lawyers who administered the trust made sure it appeared. “Does Carlos know?”

“Carlos isn’t on it either,” Simon revealed. “Only your mother, you, and Sophia. Carlos and Enzo have access to a checking account that Janet deposits into for their personal expenses, but it’s relatively limited. If anything happens to her it all goes to you and Sophia, and even the checking account dries up. Your mother’s marriage is more of an…arrangement of convenience than a romance story, and the happy family you think you’re being frozen out of doesn’t exist. Try to remember that.”

Adam didn’t really know what to say about any of that. It was the kind of knowledge that made him feel like he didn’t really know anything about where he came from.

“This doesn’t mean that the way things are happening isn’t hurting you,” Simon added. “And it doesn’t magically make it all better, or relieve anyone of responsibility for it. Even me. I’m complicit in knowing what’s going on but not doing anything about it. I have my reasons, but that doesn’t matter. And don’t ever let anybody try to feed you that “forgive and forget” bullshit when you’re older.

“If there’s any fairness in the universe, you’ll be able to make a happier life for yourself here in the States after you graduate. Just try to remember when you have those well-meaning people telling you the only right thing to do is reach out and try to reconcile…we know what we did, and we know you’re allowed to be angry about it.”

Simon said ‘we’ as if he had some say in the situation, but Adam couldn’t see how he would. He had known his mother for a very long time, from back when she’d first enlisted in the military at eighteen. That he would be the one person who she would confide such secrets in was the only reason Adam believed the things he’d said, but he highly doubted Janet would give him any sway over what she chose for her children.

Unless he knew something that she acted as if nobody knew, even herself.

“Do you know who my father is?” Adam asked bluntly, half-muffled by the pillow he was still holding. “That’s what you used to do in the army, right? Collect information? She said it was just some guy in a bar and she doesn’t even remember what he looked like. Is that really true?”

Simon looked over at him, but didn’t answer. A few seconds ticked by, and the older man simply reached over and handed him the remote to change the channel if he wanted.

Adam knew that was the only reply he was going to get. He felt stupid for asking, but part of him had thought that maybe _somebody_ would know. If his mother didn’t really want him, maybe he had another parent out there who didn’t know he existed but would want him if he did.

He turned up the volume of the stupid movie that was already on and sank down into the sofa cushions, sleepy, stressed, and emotionally exhausted.

* * * * * * * * * *

**_Current day_**:

Adam pulled the bandage tight around Keith’s calf, trying to make sure there was enough pressure to keep the wound covered and clean without causing too much pain. He was fortunate, it was just a deep graze instead of a through-and-through bullet wound, and one of them limping around here like that was enough.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to a hospital?” Keith asked, wincing a little as he flexed his leg. “I’m not a dumb little kid who believes what he sees in movies, I know you need a doctor.”

He was trying to sound confident, but Adam knew that tone of voice. A kid who was completely unprepared to deal with an imminent life or death situation alone, who had been through some things before but always with backup and support. He’d been that kid and he knew what that felt like.

But unlike all but a few adults in Adam’s life, Adam wasn’t about to dump that responsibility completely on Keith’s shoulders. He regretted now the way he’d snapped at him in the car, telling him that he was the leader and that he should decide what to do. It had been Adam’s decisions that had dragged them to this point after all, not Keith’s. He had to take responsibility for that.

“Yes, I need to see a doctor to make sure it doesn’t get infected,” he agreed, adjusting the bandage on his own arm. “But not yet. We don’t know if we’ll be found if I walk into an ER, and I know enough about battlefield triage to know I’m not going to bleed out. I just need to be careful with it until we’re sure we’re safe.”

They were in the men’s bathroom of a small restaurant, having used what little cash Adam had bothered to convert before the trip to buy what they’d needed from a pharmacy and come in here for breakfast and to use the sinks while the place wasn’t busy.

It was about seven in the morning, before the day even really started, so they had some privacy while they worked. They’d decided to keep driving until they’d run out of gas, and had slept in the car after they’d pulled it off road and hidden it. They were going to have to find different transportation now, something that THEMIS wouldn’t be looking for.

“You look like hell,” Adam informed Keith, looking him up and down. “You need to cut your hair so bad. How did you even get them to give you a rank, looking like that?”

“Says the guy who looks like he robbed a homeless man,” Keith returned, self-consciously trying to smooth down his hair. “Is my hair really the hill you want to die on?”

Adam scrunched up his nose and turned his attention to washing the bit of blood off his hands. Keith was right, in the glaring fluorescents of the small bathroom he did look in need of a shower and a change of clothes. They didn’t look completely terrible, if he was being honest, just like two tired idiots who had slept in their clothes and run out the door when they’d realized they’d gotten up late.

Basically, not bad enough that anyone was going to look twice at them, but they still weren’t going to win any awards for neatness.

“Actually,” he said suddenly, picking up the scissors from the small first aid kit. “Yeah, I do. I really, really hate your hair.”

He made some snipping motions at Keith’s hair, and the younger man squawked and tried to fight him off.

“Stop! I’m trying to grow a braid like Kolivan!”

“Come on, just a trim! You look like my sister!”

“I do _not_ look like a girl!”

Adam harassed him for a few more moments, then dropped the scissors back into the kit and let him be. He gathered up the bits of cut gauze and bloody cotton balls and put them into the plastic shopping bag, tying them up tight before he pushed them down deep in the trash can.

They could only really afford a few minutes of levity, now they had to be serious again. And Adam had to finally make the decision to stop chasing ghosts that he didn’t really need to chase, and stop putting someone else in unnecessary danger. Keith had already been hit by a bullet, this had gone far enough.

“Do you have that tracker ready?” He asked as Keith finished trying to comb his hair back into the ponytail Adam had messed up.

“Yeah. Should we use it?”

“Not yet,” Adam warned. “The fact that I used a copycat signal from it to lure Takashi away is in the incident report. If that made its way into THEMIS records, they might know you have it and be scanning for it. We need to make sure the others are in the air and looking for it so they’re here within a few minutes of turning it on.”

The only way to do that, though, was to risk calling one of them. And that meant opening up a line that might be tapped.

“Come on. I’m going to teach you some life skills,” Adam decided.

They finished cleaning up their mess and neatening themselves up, then returned to the table where they’d been sitting. Adam quickly swallowed the rest of his coffee and Keith grabbed the last of his toast, and they paid and headed back out into the warm morning.

They weren’t carrying anything and Adam had ditched the car keys already, so they started their walk through the small town they were in, sticking to the main street. It took about forty minutes before they found a strip mall that had an electronics store, which Adam walked past. He went all the way to the end of the long row of shops, to a trash an there.

“What are you doing?” Keith asked, his lip curling when Adam pulled the lid off the trash can and started carefully picking through the contents.

“Buying what we need without using a credit card,” Adam answered. “Pay attention, you might need this some day.”

He started pulling out receipts, checking them and discarding them until he found one that would work. He held it up for Keith to see.

“Receipt from the electronics shop,” he pointed out. “Someone bought a router and some cables…this will do.”

He led Keith back down the strip mall to the store, going inside and nodding in greeting to the clerk. It was a bored looking young man, definitely not a manager. That would work fine, especially since he paid absolutely no attention to the fact that two people had just come in empty handed.

They went to the aisle with the routers, and Adam searched through until he found one matching the same number as the receipt. He handed that to Keith, then began perusing through the other shelves, picking out the things that he would need. Eventually they made their way back to the front and he laid everything out.

“Hi, I’m sorry,” Adam put on his most charming smile as he handed the clerk the receipt. “My wife bought this router two days ago, but we don’t need it. I thought ours was broken, but it turned out I just accidentally unplugged it. I don’t have her credit card with me to refund it to, though.”

“Sorry, I can’t do a refund without the card it was purchased on,” the clerk frowned. “All I can give you is store credit.”

“That’s fine! I understand,” Adam answered. “In fact, can I just exchange it for these things? It should be about the same amount.”

“Oh, yeah, we can do that,” the clerk said helpfully, smoothing the receipt and punching something into the register.

He used the receipt number to ring up the return for the router, putting the router itself behind the counter once that was done, then rang up the components. Adam watched the total, which was very close but still went over by a bit of change. He did have that much left in cash, so he paid and they left the store with a bag full of items.

“That was illegal on so many levels,” Keith pointed out needlessly once they were back outside.

“What are you, a cop?” Adam asked, handing him the bag to carry. “If you feel that bad about it, we can mail a check for the cost when we get back home safely.”

Their next order of business was to find somewhere safe to hunker down and work. That was going to require a little bit more walking, to find a place where he would have access to power but also some semblance of privacy.

“These are radio parts,” Keith said after a moment of poking through the bag and finally looking at what Adam had collected. Adam hadn’t expected him to figure out that much to be honest, maybe there was some hope for him after all.

“Yes they are. Mostly. We’re going to bounce a signal directly off a satellite instead of going through a telecom provider, and we’re going to make a call directly to the Lions to get around all those messy tapped phone issues.”

“How are you going to find a satellite without a computer?” Keith asked.

Adam stopped walking and gave him a look, sighing heavily. Keith’s brain worked for a minute, then he had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Right, you’re a Garrison engineer,” he remembered. “You’ve probably worked a lot with Garrison satellites and know the codes and about where they should be.”

“Yeah. Give or take a couple hours though, it’s been a while and things might have shifted. But the sooner we get to work, the sooner we’ll find out. Come on.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“How long has it been running?”

It was the fifth time Lotor had asked that question in the two hours since the atmospheric power station had been retrofitted to the Zero crystal. Shiro usually prided himself on being a patient man, but if he was asked the equivalent of “are we there yet” one more time he was fairly certain that he was going to snap.

“A little over two vargas,” Allura answered before Shiro could, perhaps sensing her boyfriend’s imminent demise. Lotor sighed heavily and dropped back down on the creeper, sliding himself back under the console he’d been working on.

“Still not getting any more power than standard,” Shiro heard him mutter. “Is it the wiring? This grid should be practically glowing.”

“I don’t think the problem is with the wiring,” Ziran looked up from where he and James were sitting quietly against the far wall. He looked tired, and Shiro knew that after eight hours in that exoskeleton his body had to be aching. “We know the power is there, and it’s obviously flowing freely without interruption since the output is at full power.”

“Full power isn’t enough,” Allura sighed, giving up on the screen she sat at. She spun around in her chair, gesturing to the readouts she’d been looking at. “Full power isn’t going to make a dent, there’s no way we’re going to produce enough of an atmosphere to make it safe to evacuate this colony the way it needs to be done. We need more than full power.”

She was right, of course. Colonists could be evacuated in small groups, since there simply wasn’t enough oxygen and protective gear to go around. Even the short trip from the colony to the Atlas or the Galra cruiser was dangerous, the colony didn’t have a proper docking station for such huge ships, and having sick people exposed to an airless void for even a few moments had to be avoided. But because of the quarantine situation, that small bit of protective gear would have to be very thoroughly decontaminated between uses.

They had floated the idea of a temporary tunnel between the ships’ airlocks and the colony, but the engineering necessary to build something like that and make it airtight would simply take too long.

They’d been crossing their fingers that running these scrubbers on overdrive would produced at least enough air to make the evacuation transfer safe, but apparently getting this thing to work on overdrive was easier said than done.

“I know it’s not enough,” Ziran said calmly. “But what I’m telling you is that this station isn’t designed to pull power. The power core would be filled with the purified quintessence Lotor sent, and it would naturally flow outward into the station. The station isn’t pulling power from the crystal, the power is flowing from its higher concentration in the crystal to the lower concentration in the station by natural forces. We thought that a stronger power source would override that and cause a flood, but the station’s built too well.”

“Isn’t there something we can override?” Shiro asked. “Some kind of safety features we can turn off?”

“The grid used to have more of the cables, we’re currently only using half of each bundle,” Ziran answered. “But the last time we tried to rush it resulted in seismic activity. The cables were fine but their connectors snapped so they were just feeding power straight into the ground, the overflow caused groundshakes that went far enough to collapse part of the colony into the lava tubes. We’ve reinforced the working cables the make sure that can’t happen again, but if we turn up the core it won’t pick and choose. It will just feed power through the busted ones too.”

“So we need to keep the power channel numbers as they are, but find a way to force more power through them,” Allura deduced. “Nothing is ever easy, is it?”

“Why don’t you just make the pipes wider?”

Everyone looked over at James, who appeared offended to be stared at.

“What?”

“What does that even mean?” Nadia asked. “Are you even paying attention to the problem?”

“Yes,” James made a face at her. “I mean, if your wires can’t hold enough power, and you can’t use more wires because they’re broken, then make the threads of the connected wires bigger. Do you honestly think Dr. Holt designed the Atlas to shoot super powerful laser beams? Shiro did that by rearranging the whole ship to draw more power from the crystal.”

“That wasn’t me,” Shiro protested, shaking his head. “That was something else using the crystal itself to rearrange the ship. I didn’t instigate it, and I don’t know how to do the same thing here.”

“What about you?” James asked Ziran. “You do alchemy, right? Can’t you like…”

He made some hand motions that he clearly thought meant “expand,” but to Shiro it just looked like he was waving his arms around and making weird explosion noises. He made a mental not to never play charades on James’ team.

“No, sorry,” Ziran answered, smiling at the mild antics. “I’m afraid they didn’t each us how to magically build things in my engineering apprenticeship.”

“I might,” Allura murmured, frowning heavily at her readouts. Shiro almost wasn’t sure he heard her.

“You might…?” He prodded.

“I might be able to instigate it,” Allura answered, looking up at him. She looked uncertain. “Perhaps. I’m…I’m not entirely sure. It might be similar to making your arm, just taking the available quintessence and weaving it into something else. The problem is that the crystal has a lot more power running through it than I’m used to.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Lotor slid back out from under the console to look at them. “The middle of a hostile rock with no backup but one Coalition ship and thousands of Altean civilians is not the venue for practicing something that complicated.”

“There’s never a right time or right venue for practicing things that need to be done out of desperation,” Allura replied softly. “There’s never an easy way, or a safe time. If everyone always waited for the time and place to be right, the bad guys would always win.”

“Shiro, please tell her no,” Lotor requested. “Every time I do it, I’m being too careful or overprotective.”

Shiro took a deep breath and crossed his arms, leaning back against the console. He looked back and forth between Allura and Lotor, then to the readouts on her screen.

He could clearly remember those first days on Arus, when Allura had fallen out of a cryo pod calling for her father, a frightened princess suddenly saddled with the weight of an entire universe’s safety and her murdered peoples’ legacy. She’d had her trips and stumbles—they all had—but that girl he’d first met wasn’t the woman standing in front of him today.

Nobody knew what Allura was truly capable of, every time they thought they did she turned around and shocked them all by taking it ten steps farther. Shiro did not take the idea of putting her in danger lightly, but he had to consider all of the facts. He did not exist to coddle her or be her protector, and she had proven time and time again that she was wiser and more informed than those who worried about her often wanted to give her credit for.

“You’re not actually going to try to rework the power grid,” Shiro guessed. He liked to think he had known her long enough to really _know_ her. Even if it had been for less than two years, she felt more like a sister than just somebody he fought beside. “Even creating body parts out of thin air isn’t the same as that. You’re going to try what you did on the balmera? But with the crystal as a power source instead of the Castle of Lions.”

Allura scrunched up her nose at the fact that he’d called her out. But she knew better than to lie, and she nodded.

“That_ is _the same principle,” she reasoned. “Just with more power to channel.”

“And a much bigger planet,” Shiro reminded her. “The balmera was actively working with you, this planet won’t. And to be perfectly honest, even if I was one hundred percent sure you could terraform the whole thing with your eyes closed, I wouldn’t let you try it. There may never be a right time to practice that, but this is definitely one of the times not to.”

“Shiro, I can do th—”

“I’m not done,” Shiro interrupted her, pointing warningly at Lotor before he said anything that sounded even remotely like an I Told You So to her. “I’m not going to let you try to fix the planet directly. But if you think you can bypass the grid and feed more power directly into the scrubbers, then I’ll help you any way I can. The technology is here to do the work for you, Allura, don’t make it harder than it has to be.”

Allura looked at him for a moment, then laughed softly, rubbing her temple.

“You sound like my father,” she smiled. “Always pushing to do things the smarter way.”

“I’m just a very lazy man,” Shiro disagreed. “Sometimes the easier way is the more efficient one. What do you need from us?”

“James, Lotor, can you take Ziran back down to the power core?” Allura requested. “If something does overload or go wrong, I need you ready to shut this whole thing down.”

Lotor pulled himself to his feet, sighing softly as he dusted himself off.

“There’s nothing I can do to talk you out of trying, is there?” He wondered. Allura shook her head. “Very well. Then please be careful.”

He gave her a quick kiss, ignoring the “oooooh” that came from Nadia, then went to help James pull Ziran back to his feet. The three men left the room, heading back through the now brightly lit power station to go back down to the core. Ina went with them, in case extra hands were needed.

“Why’s he so paranoid?” Nadia asked when they were gone. “You wouldn’t even be here if you weren’t competent at what has to be done.”

“Lotor is just afraid sometimes that I’m biting off more than I can chew,” Allura said gently. “He’s not trying to stifle me, he’s just lost a lot and had some bad experiences with alchemy. He doesn’t want to see anything happen to me.”

“He doesn’t know any better,” Shiro chimed in, nudging her with his elbow. “Because she always tones down what she can do around him so she doesn’t hurt his fragile little feelings and make him feel weak and useless.”

“That’s not it!” Allura said defensively, but the flush coloring her cheeks said otherwise.

“She’s afraid she’ll scare him off if she seems too strong,” Shiro continued, smirking slightly. “As if a man who comes from the species that produced Krolia could possibly be afraid of strong women.”

“Oh my God, you can’t keep playing a damsel for the handsome prince!” Nadia protested, half-hanging over a railing that separated the console Allura was sitting at from the one where Ryan was trying to pretend he wasn’t there. “You’re like, the badass warrior queen! If he can’t handle it then he can walk!”

“Yeah Allura,” Shiro agreed. “You’re like, the badass warrior queen.”

Allura’s face was practically flaming at this point. She covered it with both hands, elbowing Shiro sharply.

“Knockitoff,” she hissed, peeking through her fingers. “You’re being horrible!”

“Okay, okay,” Shiro relented, grinning slightly. “But you do have to stop coddling him. You’re not Honerva. You’ve already proven to the rest of us that you can handle power without being corrupted, even if it scares him he has to learn it too.”

“It’s not just Honerva,” Allura frowned, picking up her bag. “He knows first hand what power can do, he’s been through it. I think perhaps he’s becoming scared of quintessence in general, he’s seen it used for a lot of terrible things. I’m going outside, I think I’ll have an easier time if I have at least one of the oxygen scrubbers within view.”

Shiro pushed away from the console he was leaning against, but she held up a hand.

“No, you stay here.”

“Absolutely not,” Shiro protested. “I’m not going to stop you from trying this, but I remember perfectly well how exhausted you were for days after the balmera. If this tires you out anywhere near as much, I’m going to be there.”

“Fine,” she sighed.

Shiro motioned for Nadia and Ryan to remain, and to keep tabs on the scan readouts. He accompanied Allura to the elevator, heading up to the top of the ravine.

“You know,” he said once they were alone and on the way up. “If he’s being a pain with the smothering worry, I can threaten him.”

“You will not!” Allura squeaked, scandalized. “Leave him alone.”

“I don’t care how tall he is, I’m very good at looming,” Shiro offered. “And I can do a really good scowl. I might not be able to slam him so hard into the floor he bounces twice like you did, but he doesn’t know that.”

“You’ve become very flippant since you got married,” Allura chastised. “What is it, as soon as you locked someone down you decided you didn’t have to be sweet and nice anymore? Or is Adam just a terrible influence? Do I have to have a chat with him?”

“Oh, I wish you would,” Shiro chuckled as the elevator came to a stop, flipping his helmet back on as Allura did the same. “You’re one of the few people I think can hold their own against him.”

They left the safety of the power station, moving to the ravine edge where they could see out into the distance. There were only a handful of scrubbers built, relatively clustered around the colony location. No air meant builders could only travel so far with artificial life support, the plan had originally been for them to expand as an atmosphere slowly developed until they’d covered the planet.

Unlike when they’d first gone inside the power station, the sun had recently risen and they didn’t have too much time before they would need to seek shelter. In the distance Shiro could see the nearest scrubber, it’s lights now on as power was filtered to it through the visible cables running outward from the power station. They were wrapped in protective metal.

“Radiation levels are safe,” Shiro told Allura, checking his armor’s atmospheric readings. “For now. We should be fine with our armor, but if we’re out here too long it gets risky for the others to come out to the MFEs.”

“Then we should get started,” Allura supposed, unshouldering her bag. “You need to stand back. This will be much more power than the Castle of Lions had to offer, I don’t know how safe it is to stand too close.”

Shiro took her bag and backed up, but he didn’t go far. He positioned himself halfway between Allura and the power station, prepared to move either to her side or inside to safety as the situation demanded.

“Are you guys ready down in the core?” He asked over the comm.

“Yes, we’re ready,” Ziran answered. “We have no idea what we’re supposed to be watching for, but we’re ready.”

“Nice optimism,” Shiro commented. “Nadia, Ryan, keep running the scanners. Let us know if the levels around the colony get anywhere near breathable.”

“On it.”

Shiro let out a sharp breath and reluctantly gave Allura a thumbs up. It was very difficult to forget how she’d crumbled to the ground on the balmera, but he tried to believe this might go differently.

Allura said nothing, but he heard her breathe in deeply over the comm. She looked out at the scrubber and appeared to be doing nothing, but Shiro knew better. She didn’t have to strike a pose or do any complicated gestures to reach out and sense things, she was following the feel of the power flow to get a sense for where all the scrubbers were.

After a few minutes of empty silence, she folded her hands and closed her eyes, bowing her head.

Shiro wasn’t sure what to look for. She wouldn’t be blatantly pulling anything out of a ship and forcing it down into the ground this time, she would be reaching out and forcing quintessence to flow faster through already established channels. He didn’t really expect to be able to see anything, to be honest.

He turned out to be wrong. It took a few minutes, but slowly, cracks became visible in the metal pipe covering the cables that ran to the nearest scrubber. Power was definitely starting to flow through there all right.

“Output levels just moved beyond recommended parameters,” Ziran’s voice came over the comm, verifying what Shiro was seeing. “This thing is starting to light up like a Tildrilum candle.”

“I have no idea what that is,” Shiro answered, keeping a careful eye on Allura. The telltale glow of quintessence was beginning to pool at her feet, as like attracted like and some of the stray power moved toward the hands manipulating it. “But don’t stop it, not yet. Ryan, Nadia, do you have anything?”

“Nitrogen and oxygen production just jumped,” Ryan answered. “They haven’t started pooling in high enough quantities for Argon or Carbon Dioxide production to kick in, but the scrubbers are definitely moving into overdrive.”

“Releasing or laying?” Shiro asked.

“The sensors are on the bottom of the scrubber bases,” Lotor replied to that. “A portion of what’s produced will definitely escape in the beginning, but if the readings are rising then the planet’s gravity is pulling the air down to lay on the ground. Our biggest worry won’t be the air escaping up, it will be the air escaping out and away from the colony.”

“Allura?” Shiro called gently. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” she answered without opening her eyes or moving.

He didn’t want to break her concentration, so he didn’t ask anything else. According to her armor sensors her heart rate was good and her breathing was normal, even if the power cables were looking a bit frail and the lights in the visible scrubber were almost rivaling the sun.

“I’ve got cracks in the cable covers,” Shiro warned Lotor. “Are they going to hold?”

“The covers are just to protect the cables from the sun,” Ziran replied. “They’re not going to explode if that’s what you’re asking, quintessence doesn’t do that. But she’s not feeding the power through the cables themselves, she’s just using them as a guide…there’s pretty much just a pure river of quintessence in there right now. You really need to make sure you’re at least fifteen meters away, ten meters is the overexposure zone to anything coming out of those cracks.”

Shiro estimated that he was about twenty meters from the nearest cable bundle, but knowing he was outside of the worst danger zone didn’t exactly reassure him.

And what reassured him even less was when Allura dropped her hands away from where they’d been folded, fisting them at her sides. She dug her feet into the soil as if bracing herself, and the cracks started to widen. Shiro backed in the opposite direction just to be safe, but then he noticed that the pebbles and dust on the ground were beginning to move.

He felt it right after he saw it, the tremors beginning to run through the ground.

“Nitrogen levels just spiked,” Ryan announced.

“That’s too much,” Lotor warned, sounding a little more excited than Shiro was comfortable with. “Shiro, your safety zone is going to get much smaller very quickly, get back inside the station. Allura, you need to stop. You’re well past the acceptable threshold the overload is seeping too far into the ground and disrupting the planet’s natural quintessence tides.”

Shiro started to back toward the station, motioning for Allura to hurry up and join him, but saw too late that her eyes were still closed. Her heart rate was starting to rise and her breathing was getting heavy.

“Allura,” Shiro warned.

“Allura, stop!” Lotor warned again. “Get back inside and let the overflow dissipate!”

“I can’t stop, I’m not doing it!” Allura answered, sounding strained. “That spike wasn’t me, I think I did something to activate the crystal…it’s like a dam broke, I’m trying to hold it back!”

“Oxygen levels at more than half the scrubbers are almost breathable,” Nadia declared. “Argon and Carbon Dioxide production just kicked on in three of them. But I also have overexposure alarms screaming all over the place and I’ve got to tell you, I’m getting Three Mile Island vibes here.”

Shiro glanced back at the station. He could only see one cable bundle from where he was, but the glow that was starting to come from the lower ground were other levels of the station sat told him that it wasn’t just the one he could see that was quickly beginning to flood. The ground around it was starting to glow as quintessence leaked out, and the slight tremors were beginning to grow strong enough that the shifting made him dizzy.

Cracks started to run through the ground as the shaking got worse, and across the ravine Shiro saw less stable parts of the ground start to break away.

A jolt pulled his feet out from under him, and he saw Allura fall down to her knees. The cracks in the ground started to get wider.

“You two need to get inside right now!” Ziran’s voice came over the comms. “Lotor’s on his way if you need help!”

Shiro could barely get back to his feet, and around him the brittle edges of the ravine were beginning to cascade down in a slow, crumbling rock slide. He had to get back to the station elevator and back to safety before either the destruction or the overexposure killed him, but he couldn’t leave Allura behind.

“Tell Lotor to stay inside!” Shiro warned, digging his feet in. “If he tries to help it will just be three people in trouble instead of two!”

He jumped as the earth beneath him practically dissolved, hitting his booster try and get over to solid ground. Veins of light were beginning to thread through everything around them and he knew his armor would only shield him from exposure for so long, but it was possible that it would be even worse if Allura failed to stem the tide.

Shiro missed the unbroken ledge, barely managing to grab it with his fingertips, and hit his booster again, somehow pulling himself up and rolling away from the edge. The ground was separating as caverns beneath some of it collapsed, and Allura was hunched over on her knees on a level of rock a good six feet above. He could hear the warning alarms as her heart rate skyrocketed, no doubt from a mixture of trying to deactivate the crystal and fighting down her own anxiety.

Shiro searched for somewhere to get a decent grip, trying to climb up to get to her. It was difficult with all the shaking trying to throw him off balance, threatening to send him plummeting down into the ravine. The sudden moment of calm that washed over him came just as he was sure he might give in to panic.

Everything went quiet as the rumbling sounds of shattering earth receded, and the glaring shadows caused by the sun against the shifting rock softened to an even, ambient light. He felt one of his feet take a step forward, then the other.

His hand came into his field of vision and he watched it move of its own accord, as if he were seeing something that wasn’t part of him. It rested on the rock in front of him and the veins of light moved, weaving themselves around it. The stone wall shifted under his fingers, growing smooth, curving in, part of it folding out to form a solid bar to grip.

His other hand moved to rest about a foot above it and the same thing occurred, then again as he pulled himself up. Step by step, the very essence of the stone molded itself around him as he climbed upward.

Except it wasn’t him climbing, Shiro obviously knew that much. And it certainly wasn’t him changing the earth to suit his needs. But this also wasn’t the first time he’d felt this presence, it wasn’t the first time it had come to the forefront when he’d desperately needed help. This was the same feeling he’d had on the Atlas, the same feeling he’d had when something had shown him Honerva’s weakness on that plateau when he was trying to save Adam.

The White Lion, who for whatever reason had decided that he made a better host than Allura.

Shiro didn’t fight it. Quite the opposite, he ceded it entirely, willingly handing over control. As soon as he did, it was as if everything opened up.

Like on the plateau, the dusty monochrome of the rock and plains disappeared, shifting to a view of the world that was elegantly simple and surreal. He could see every little thread of quintessence running through the power station: the glowing core that housed the crystal, the river pouring from it, flooding the smaller streams and estuaries that ran outward to the scrubbers. He could see the veins where it leaked out, pooling and saturating the ground, and the slightly darker shade of the natural quintessence tides of the planet.

He could see where one interrupted the other, see the waves and eddies that went out to shake the earth and disrupt the ground. Exactly what was going on was laid out clear for him to see.

But he wasn’t prompted to do anything about it. Instead he watched as he approached Allura, the ground around both of them morphing to grow more solid and stop shaking. Even as everything crumbled around them, Shiro knew they were safe; he could see the reinforcement that ran from where they stood all the way down toward the planet’s eerily beautiful core.

It was like standing on glass, watching a world play out around them in a show of liquid light.

He knelt down next to Allura and felt his body obey him, making him realize that it wasn’t necessarily out of his control. There was a very faint tug-of-war going on, but it was between two entities who both wanted to do the same thing and were trying to cooperate on the movements, but were both just a bit out of sync.

Thoughts whispered in his head, like he was hearing what was going through someone else’s mind but couldn’t quite decipher what was being said as he helped Allura sit up and took both of her hands.

When he did he definitely felt it, it was like walking across a carpet to build up static then touching a metal door knob. Like a sharp spark as something passed from Shiro to Allura, made her head snap up to look at him. He could see it in her eyes, wide and borderline shocked, as she looked from him to the world around them and back.

She saw it, he knew. Whatever the White Lion had done to let him see the intimate workings of the world, the touch was sharing it with her. But unlike Shiro, who could only really look at everything in awe, there was a glimmer of understanding in Allura’s eyes. Like she had just been handed the last piece of a puzzle she had been slaving over for years.

She held one of his hands tightly, gingerly reaching out to run her fingers along one of the nearby veins of quintessence. It responded to her commands, solidifying from a mass of loose threads disrupting the ground around it to a solid rope of light. The darker color of the planet’s natural quintessence settled, the small area under her hand calming.

She knew what to do in a way that Shiro didn’t, but even as he watched her try to corral the larger overflow, he could tell it was beyond her experience. But not beyond the experience of one who’d spent tens of thousands of years manipulating the galaxy-level power of an active white hole. Shiro could feel the calm reassurance washing over them both, assuring them that this was trivial compared to what the White Lion was truly capable of.

But the flood of information that came next was useless to Shiro, he wasn’t an alchemist and he didn’t understand the concepts. He had no ability to manipulate quintessence, and everything that was imparted was lost on him. The only thing he did know was that Allura saw what he didn’t.

He felt his hands squeeze hers, a flood of warmth running through their fingers, and then he took a step back. There was a residual glow that shimmered on her skin, running up her arms to stain her normally blue eyes a pale, icy white.

That was the end of his part, Shiro knew. He was the vessel and he was no longer needed. Even so, he felt the White Lion remain, and his view of the quintessence currents swirling around them remained unchanged. He stayed back and watched as Allura moved farther out, closer to the edge, looking around and taking stock of everything.

A sweeping motion of one hand tore the quintessence back away from the scrubbers, bringing it flowing back toward the power station. But instead of draining back into the crystal she brought it to her, twisting it and shaping it and forcing it to succumb to her will. No longer mismatched rivulets and streams, it washed back outwards in all directions as a solid wave.

Shiro wasn’t prepared for it, and the White Lion had seemingly forgotten that its vessel wasn’t quite as fortified as it was. He hit the ground, hard, slamming his head and jostling the other entity’s hold free. In a rush the world returned to its solid, dull-colored state and an ache reverberated through his skull. His helmet protected him from cracking his head open entirely, but his vision still went blurry around the edges and momentarily went dark.

When Shiro’s eyes opened again, everything was once again quiet. Blurry and out of focus, and there was definitely something very wrong, but it was quiet. It took him a good ten seconds of violently blinking to realize that the green in front of his face wasn’t a figment of his imagination, and he shot up into a sitting position to look around wildly.

There was more green in front of him, and behind him, and under him. Green in the distance, and on the other side of the ravine. Dotted with white and yellow and pink, swaying gently in an unmistakable breeze.

Grass. Flowers.

_Air._

Shiro fought with his helmet but finally managed to pull it off, slowly taking a careful breath. It only occurred to him after he’d done it that he should have checked the oxygen levels before potentially killing himself, but his head ached and his senses were still coming back.

There was nothing wrong with the air, at all, and it wasn’t just a thin atmosphere. It was breathable, rich, fresh.

Allura had done exactly what he hadn’t believed she could; she’d sidestepped the machines and alchemically terraformed the planet herself.

Allura.

Shiro scrambled to his feet, looking around. He spotted her a few yards away, miraculously still standing but swaying slightly on her feet.

“Allura!” He tossed his helmet to the side and ran to put an arm around her, helping her fight her own helmet off and take deep gulps of air. “Are you insane? You could’ve been killed!”

Allura’s response was to give him a somewhat drunken thumbs up, then suddenly lean over and throw up just inches from his boots.

He grabbed her again to keep her upright, sidestepping the mess as the station elevator opened and Lotor came out. He had probably been stuck in the entrance, unable to see what was going on but braving it now that everything was calm. He ran about three steps then skidded to a halt, looking at the grass around his feet like a cat who had just accidentally found out the bottom of the sink was wet.

“What…this…you…I…”

He continued to sputter as he stalked over, borderline apoplectic. Shiro raised his eyebrows at him tiredly.

“What’re you going to do about it?” He asked blandly. “You going to throw up on my shoes too?”

Lotor gave him the most offended look he’d ever seen the man give. He came to support Allura from the other side, pointing at Shiro warningly.

“Don’t you channel that man of yours at me, I will throw you off this cliff.”

Shiro made a mental note to tell Adam he had made people think he was a terrible influence twice today, and lightly rubbed Allura’s back as they helped her limp back toward the station.

“James, Ziran? Nadia, Ryan? Can I get an update on what the hell happened here?” Shiro asked.

He knew that the White Lion had helped Allura do this, of course, but he wasn’t going to say that. Not until he’d had time to sit down and talk to Allura about it, which wouldn’t happen until after she was rested. What he did need to know was exactly what she’d done, and what else they had to do.

“Alchemical terraforming,” Ziran replied. “It’s what we’ve been doing, but I’ve definitely never seen it on this kind of scale. If we’re lucky, each of us can manage maybe a square foot in a day, nothing like this. That crystal really kicked her into overdrive.”

“Looks like the scrubbers turned off once the oxygen and nitrogen reached certain levels,” Ryan said. “It’s not the whole planet, just a big chunk of it within the their area, they look like they’re generating some kind of artificial membrane to keep it in. Like a dome.”

“Which is amazing, because the scrubbers don’t have a setting to generate a membrane,” Ziran added.

“Yeah, the crystal just does that,” Shiro heard James saying to Ziran in the background. “Good luck sticking to your blueprints if you’re using that thing, it just changes stuff to whatever it wants it to be.”

Shiro and Lotor got Allura back to the station entrance, but rather than go inside Shiro let her slide gently to her knees, where she immediately threw up again. He motioned Lotor toward the MFEs.

“We need to go back,” he decided. “She needs to rest, and this membrane will probably only last as long as the crystal is in place. We need to get the colony evacuated to the Atlas and the cruiser and get back to friendly space as soon as possible.”

“Agreed,” Lotor sighed, kneeling down beside Allura. “I’ll yell at you both later, when I’m sure she’s okay.”

Shiro ordered everyone out of the station while Lotor scooped Allura up and carried her to the planes. While waiting for the others, he grabbed her dropped back and scooped up a few samples of the soil, grass, and flowers. There had been no life here, nothing from which this could spring, and he was curious to get a good look at the reality that had sprung literally from Allura’s imagination.

Once she was all right and they were on their way back to safety, though. His first priority was getting everyone back to Earth alive.

* * * * * * * * * *

“All levels are coming back safe,” Coran declared, turning away from his console to look at them. “There’s a membrane over the area keeping the atmosphere in, and the planet’s magnetic field has been shifted to block the worst of the solar radiation.”

“That’s not something that those scrubbers could have done alone,” Bandor frowned. “Look at that, that’s insane! We’ve been here working for years, and we barely got anywhere.”

“And now suddenly there’s a sunny meadow twice the size of Albuquerque,” Romelle murmured. She looked over at Veronica, who was leaning against the Captain’s dais next to her. “I hope Allura and Shiro are all right.”

“This does feel like something those two got into, doesn’t it?” Veronica asked. “But I think they’re okay. I think if anything happened to Allura, we’d feel something through Jade and Carnelian.”

Romelle supposed that was true. The Sinclines weren’t quite as hooked into them as the Lions were to the Paladins, but the Lions had also been around for ten thousand years more. Jade, Pearl and Carnelian were very different from any other ships she’d ever flown, and she’d begun to develop an affection for hers.

“We should probably get ready,” Romelle supposed, after a few more minutes of watching Coran run scans. “Shiro said we’d start the evacuation as soon as it was safe, we should start getting everybody prepped.”

“Sure, I’ll be right down,” Veronica nodded as Romelle pushed away from the dais. “I just want to see the results of a few more of these scans, I’ll meet you down in the hangars.”

“I want to hang out too,” Bandor agreed. “This is amazing! I want to know all the details.”

“Okay, I’ll see you guys downstairs,” Romelle agreed. “Don’t be too long.”

If she was being truthful, she wasn’t nearly as interested in the terraforming as she was in being downstairs when the team who’d done it got back. After being on Earth for so long she had grown used to blue skies and green grass, and while she was still thrilled to see her peoples’ colony finally showing some life, she was a little more interested in the return of Ziran and James.

She hurried out of the bridge and down the hall toward the elevator, stopping when she heard somebody having a coughing fit followed by the sound of a crash. Peeking into the open door of the small break room, she found Nikolaev holding the half-full coffee carafe, looking morosely down at a broken mug on the floor.

“Everything okay?” She asked, entering the room and lightly nudging a large piece of ceramic over toward the others. “What happened?”

“Just me having bad luck,” Nikolaev sighed, putting the carafe back. “I started coughing while I was holding the mug and accidentally slammed it against the counter.”

“Here, I’ll grab the broom,” Romelle offered. She started to walk past him to the small closet in the corner, but stopped when she got a good look at him. “Niko…are you sure you’re okay? You’re kind of pale.”

“I’m just really tired,” Nikolaev smiled. “You know, that whole three-hour nap we each got since we’ve been here. And I get migraines sometimes, I think the light’s giving me a headache.”

Romelle wasn’t so sure. She reached up and put a hand on Nikolaev’s forehead, and suddenly felt sick to her own stomach.

He was practically burning up.

“Crap,” she murmured, rushing to slam the break room door closed. “Crap, crap, crap.”

“What?” Nikolaev put a hand to his own head, but clearly was unable to feel the temperature difference.

That didn’t surprise her. Nikolaev wasn’t a stupid or reckless man, if he had realized he was sick and not just tired he wouldn’t have set foot outside of his quarters until a medical team cleared him.

“You have a fever,” she informed him, hitting the intercom. “I need a medic in the bridge level break room, please! Two exposed, one with a fever!”

“Crap,” Nikolaev was behind her, softly repeating her mantra as he tried to check himself for any other symptoms. “Crap, crap, crap…”

He immediately moved to the far side of the room, as far away from her as he could, and covered his nose and mouth with a napkin. Romelle covered hers with her shirt, knowing that it probably didn’t matter. Nikolaev had been coughing all over this room before she’d walked in, probably just under the assumption that his throat was a little dry from his lack of coffee.

She groaned and leaned against the door, waiting for the medics to arrive and decide if they needed to be quarantined.

They couldn’t be sick, they just couldn’t. If Nikolaev was, that meant that their attempts to stop the spread of the disease had been pointless, and that it was far more contagious than they had originally thought.

She hoped that wasn’t the case. She hoped he really was just tired, and maybe he wasn’t even feverish. Maybe he was just flushed from a dry-throat cough, or he really did have a migraine. Maybe she wasn’t exposed, maybe she wasn’t in any danger.

That had to be it. They’d been so careful, here was no way Nikolaev could have caught anything from the colony. He would get some aspirin from the medics, and he would be fine. She would be fine.

She hoped.


	6. Chapter 6

It could have been a warm summer day if he’d wanted it to be, but Kuro clearly wasn’t in the right frame of mind for cheerful sunlight and cool, pleasant breezes. Outside the little stone cottage everything was frozen and dead, not a fluttering leaf or soft blade of grass in sight. Up above, the night sky was an endless field of inky velvet with no stars left to shine, the only light coming from the spontaneous flashes in the far-off distance where the Great Attractor steadily swallowed the last remaining bits of matter.

It was the death of a universe here. Bleak, cold, heavy with a melancholy feeling that weighed down the very air, still and stale and empty.

Gold had solidified this astral space himself, but it had still been created by Kuro and only Kuro could change it. So as much as he would have preferred trees that weren’t half rotted away, and views of grassy meadows instead of cliffs that fell off into stretches of black desert dotted only with bleached bones, it wasn’t his space to arrange.

He didn’t knock because he already knew there would be no answer, and he found the inside of the small cottage had fared no better than the outside.

Frost left its claw marks halfway across the floor, and wooden shelves were broken and collapsed. The once-welcoming rugs were threadbare and faded and covered with shards of shattered glass from decorative vases and vials and jars. The work table was collapsed, spilling books across the floor where they had rotted and become covered with mold, and the shutters over the windows had fallen off and allowed the chilly air to come in.

It was dark, it was broken, it was cold.

Kuro sat on the floor by the hearth, but there was no fire this time. The chair and its foot stool were the only things still intact, and only because he was leaning back against them, his arms wrapped around his knees as he stared through the stone hearth at nothing.

There were many arguments against bonding with a mortal core, like the dulling of once-infinite comprehension and the loss of a good deal of power. The inability to ever go home was up there, as was the terrifying prospect of possibly dying only to be reborn and potentially go through it again eventually because you were still just as fragile.

But the most frightening aspect of the whole ordeal was this. Not the physical threats that came from the outside, but she sheer magnitude of emotion that could rip one apart from the inside.

Reapers felt. So did Guardians and Sentinels, and many other denizens of the quintessence field. Feelings were a mark of an intelligent species. But they didn’t feel like _this_, with such violent ferocity that the very foundations of their mind could be shaken and torn asunder. Emotion on this scale was reserved for the physical realms, for mortal beings who could rage and mourn to excess without worrying about accidentally destroying galaxies the way a Reaper or Guardian might.

Gold could feel it hanging in the air here, an almost sickly ache that clawed at his chest and made him feel as if his skin was too tight. It was an enemy that couldn’t be fought off because it came from within, who left no alternative but to suffer.

He moved quietly across the cold cottage and sat down in the arm chair, waiting for a moment to see if he had overstepped his boundaries.

Kuro said nothing. And worse, Gold could feel that it wasn’t because he didn’t mind the company. It was because he didn’t _care_. He didn’t care if Gold stayed or left, he didn’t care if this entire astral plane collapsed in on itself, he didn’t care if the real universe really did come to a premature end at the hands of the Final Maelstrom that eventually brought all realities to their natural conclusion. He didn’t care about anything.

Gold hated everything about this situation, but mostly the fact that there was nothing he could do to fix it. The same barrier that separated the physical world from the quintessence field separated him from Kuro, this little pocket of space was the only place where that separation didn’t exist. At the same time, Kuro was only ever in this pocket when he could no longer put on a brave face to the outside world and needed a few minutes to hide somewhere and lose it.

Gold couldn’t step out of the containment room where he currently stayed and just walk upstairs to go find Kuro and see if he was okay. He couldn’t stop by with a small gift and tell him things would be all right. He couldn’t do much of anything, except watch from a distance when Kuro came here now and then, trying to pretend he couldn’t sense the anguished screaming that reverberated outward with an almost disturbing force whether Kuro meant it to or not.

He sat back in the chair and put one foot up on the foot rest, letting an arm drape down lightly over one of Kuro’s shoulders to touch his arm. Just to let him know that even if he couldn’t feel emotion on this level and even if he couldn’t truly understand what the other was feeling, he did know it was painful and Kuro wasn’t alone.

“I’m not staying long,” Kuro finally said, sounding tired and dreary. “I just needed a few minutes.”

“That’s okay, I’m not here so you can entertain me,” Gold answered. He knew why Kuro didn’t want to spend too much time here, disconnected with the outside world. “It’s not going to be long, is it?”

Kuro didn’t say anything. After a long moment of silence he shifted, turning a little to hug Gold’s arm and bury his face against it. Gold twisted a little in the chair so he could rest his free hand on Kuro’s hair.

“I’m sorry,” Gold murmured. “I know this is hard. I really wish I could make him better, but I can’t.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kuro mumbled against his arm. “I know you couldn’t do it even if you were able to, I know how it works. You can’t work freely in a reality you’re not a part of, otherwise one of those Guardians would’ve helped him by now. It just sucks.”

Kuro being correct didn’t make Gold wish any less that there was something he could do. The fact that there was very little he could do here without a physical body to filter it through was awful, and the longer Gold was here the more he understood why the Guardians would have guided mortals to create the Lion ships in their image. At least the Lions were something that could be manipulated, something they could filter their power through. Gold could do absolutely nothing but sit here and watch, waiting for someone to come along who would be willing to sacrifice some of their freedom to tote around an immortal being trying to save the universe. And even more complicated, it had to be someone who would help him for the right reasons, not somebody who just saw it as a way to gain power.

“This whole thing sucks,” Kuro said again.

He sat up a little, raising his head. He let go of Gold’s arm with one hand and held it up, flexing his fingers and forming a fist.

“I feel like the longer I starve myself, the weaker one part of me gets, the stronger another part gets underneath. I don’t know how to explain it, but I don’t like it. It feels like the harder I try to make myself smaller, make sure I don’t hurt anything, the bigger I get in a way nobody can see. I’m not just sad, I’m angry. I’m pissed. Things just keep happening one after another and none of it is fair, and it makes me so mad.

“But I’m afraid that if I let myself be angry like I want to be, this other side is going to come out and I don’t know what it will do. I don’t know if I’ll just accidentally break a few dishes or if I’ll drain the life out of this whole system and its star. So I have to just sit here and take everything that happens with a straight face, just nod and swallow it down and feel like I’m being burned alive from the inside out.”

Gold didn’t know any other bonded Reapers, by their very nature they didn’t live in the quintessence field so he didn’t come across them. In truth, they knew very little about what happened to someone when they bonded with a mortal core. It had been observed that their physical brains became much more advanced but were still limited in how much they could be adapted. It had been noted that the power they wielded was perhaps half of what they could do in their natural state. It was known that their emotions became wilder and stronger, less restrained.

But Gold didn’t know who had observed this, or noted it, or first knew it. It wasn’t written anywhere, it was just a general knowledge that had long been passed down. And he had never heard anything like what Kuro was describing.

But Kuro saying it out loud told Gold that he wasn’t crazy, at least. Because what Kuro was describing was something he had personally been seeing over the last few months since he’d been here.

When Gold told Kuro that his presence here should be bigger, he had meant it. He could sense power simmering under the surface, quietly at first but gradually beginning to grow, power that should have left him feeling confident and a little more demanding of respect instead of huddling quietly and fearing for his safety. Nobody on this planet could do anything to him if he didn’t want them to.

He was a true Druid, one who’d been born with a mastery of two of the five druidic elements. There was an inborn power, that of a Reaper, which came from within and needed to be recharged and strengthened by feeding, one that was intrinsically part of his life force. But that wasn’t the power Gold felt steadily growing here. This was more like Allura’s alchemy, an ability to manipulate the quintessence of the universe around him.

It made Gold worry. It was in Kuro’s personality to repress everything, to not show too many cracks in his armor. That trait extended to this as well, and he was repressing something that might help turn the tide of this war if he wasn’t afraid to explore it. And, more importantly, he was repressing something that might help keep him alive when simply existing sapped too much of his more esoteric strength.

It was entirely possible that there was another change that took place after bonding, one that adapted the individual more comfortably to survival in a physical reality, but he simply didn’t know enough to safely give advice.

“I’m always here,” Gold said, trying to be encouraging. “If you want to talk about it, or just want somebody to complain to. You’re allowed to be angry, and you don’t have to keep it all inside.”

Kuro didn’t reply, and Gold immediately wished he hadn’t said anything. He wondered if he’d overstepped his bounds, or insulted Kuro by assuming he was more trusted than he was.

“You don’t _have_ to tell me anything, obviously,” he tried to backpedal. “I’m just saying, if you want to. I know you’re having a hard time with this, losing him is obviously very difficult. But you’ll still have me here once it’s over.”

He realized what he’d just said when Kuro looked up at him. Gold winced.

“I didn’t mean that how it sounded,” he blurted out. “I’m not trying to take his place, the man’s still alive for Light’s sake, and you’re…well, you. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with you, there’s not, you’re beautiful and strong and sweet, I just mean that you’re _you_. You’re the Storm Warden, you know? And eventually you’re going to remember that and you’re going to stop being scared and start showing everyone here what that means, and I’m just an idiot who spent half his life not realizing you’re not supposed to eat the wrapper on Redfruit candies and only realized yesterday that flames don’t have shadows—”

Kuro reached up and put a hand over Gold’s mouth.

“Please stop talking,” he requested.

Gold fell silent, wishing he could kick himself. Kuro let go of him completely and sat up, looking up at him.

“Golds can see the future, right?” He asked. “I know you said things are hard to read right now, and that even if they weren’t you wouldn’t be allowed to tell me what’s coming, but can you at least trace my thread and just tell me how long it’s going to feel like this? It feels like it will last forever, I just want to know that it will go away someday.”

That wasn’t a question Gold had expected. That was why he didn’t have a nice, placating answer, or a gentle reassurance ready. He could only give the hard, uncomfortable truth.

“I can’t see anything past today,” he said honestly, trying not to look as uncomfortable as he felt. “I’ve tried tracing many peoples’ threads, but they all stop today, and they all lead to one person.”

Gold had seen this day coming for months, but had never really known the significance of it. He still couldn’t quite understand the full ramifications and he still didn’t know details, but he had come to some conclusions. He sat up, pulling away from Kuro and folding his hands in his lap.

“I didn’t want to push it on you, you have enough to deal with. But everything is blocked, everywhere, there’s nothing I can see because it’s not woven yet. There have always been points in time that rely on the decisions of a single person, and today we’re coming upon one. Your gentleman friend may not have much longer left here, but he’s going to have a very important decision to make.”

“Curtis?” Kuro looked a mixture of pained and confused. “He’s only got a few hours, a day at the most. What kind of decision can he make in that time that would affect everything?”

“I don’t know, that’s kind of my point,” Gold replied. “But he’s going to choose to do something, or not to do something, and that’s going to decide which path this universe goes down. Maybe there’s something he’ll tell you, or something he knows. Something he’s seen but doesn’t realize is important yet. There are a lot of possibilities. I can’t even see anything for me past today, so whatever this is will affect me too. But there’s nothing you can do about it, so you shouldn’t dwell on it.”

“How am I not going to dwell on it?” Kuro asked crossly. “He’s dying. By the time the sun comes up again he’s going to be _dead_, do you understand that? He’s going to be gone, forever. How am I not supposed to dwell on the fact that now he’s also got the weight of the universe bearing down on him for some reason?”

“He’s not going to be gone forever,” Gold said, trying to be optimistic. “He’ll be reborn eventually. And, depending on how this war turns out, you might even be around for it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Kuro scoffed. “What am I supposed to do? Sit around for a couple decades then start searching a planet with billions of people to try and single out which one is him, even though he’ll never remember me and will be a different person? One who won’t have the same past or the same inclination to put up with me?”

“Remember the stories?” Gold asked. “That’s what the Mage does. Lifetime after lifetime, tracking down his love and courting her over and over again.”

Kuro gave Gold an annoyed look and two middle fingers, which told him exactly how he felt about that.

“I’m not a sorry excuse for a god who cares more about sticking it in my favorite soul’s current meat suit than keeping existence from falling apart,” Kuro said harshly. “Thanks but no thanks.”

He was understandably bitter. It was true, there was no point in him waiting around for Curtis to shuffle back into the mortal coil, he would be a different person. Many of the same values and much the same personality, but different experiences and nothing he shared with Kuro anymore. If he was even a “he” in his next incarnation and not a “she,” which probably wouldn’t work for Kuro’s preferences.

Kuro stiffened suddenly, his eyes going wide for an instant before he squeezed them closed and slapped his hands over his ears. Gold thought he felt something rippling through the fabric of this universe but he wasn’t quite certain, and it obviously wasn’t affecting him nearly as much. But before he could ask about it Kuro was gone, back to the physical plane to escape whatever it was that was affecting him so strongly.

Gold sat in the cold, quiet dark, missing the pleasant song of windchimes that had painted the air the last time he was here. He missed the fire in the hearth, the silver grass, the sparkling stars. He missed the piles of books and the vials and jars filled with their glittering contents, and the warm breeze coming in through the open windows.

But really, as he always did when they parted ways these days, he mostly just missed Kuro.

* * * * * * * * * *

Lance looked up from his tablet screen as Kuro jumped in his sleep, falling out of his chair. He startled everyone with the sudden movement, making a ruckus in the otherwise quiet room. He was about to ask if the other man was all right, but a weird feeling stopped him from opening his mouth.

It was a faint dizziness, as if feeling the tremors of a faraway earthquake. Something shifting so subtly that his eyes and ears missed it while his inner balance picked it up, resulting in a brief dissonance between his senses. It came and went quickly, leaving no permanent damage, but a look around the room said he wasn’t the only person who felt it.

Hunk and Pidge looked as perplexed as he felt, and Lance had to deduce that the strange “quake” had been what startled Kuro. But Sarah, Gail, and Raina continued to type away without noticing anything but the noise, and Curtis concern was more with making sure Kuro was okay than with any strange sensations.

“I’m fine,” Kuro was murmuring, pushing Curtis’ hands off him and getting to his feet by himself without help. He was just as touchy as he had been since he’d arrived, and seemed to be at the end of his patience. “Can we go now?”

“Soon,” Curtis said soothingly. “As soon as I finish helping them with this last thing, we’ll go.”

Kuro didn’t like that answer. Lance didn’t know what was bugging him, but he made a noise of annoyance and stalked past them, leaving the communications room entirely. Curtis started to get up and go after him, then sighed and sat back down.

They were attempting to hack the previous THEMIS Warchief’s files, having come to a consensus that they needed to be able to identify the threats they currently couldn’t see. Apparently only the one in charge had a full roster of THEMIS agents, operatives, and assets, the only full list that existed in an organization where limiting knowledge was required to keep agents safe.

But if they were going to figure out who was out there potentially waiting to kill them all, they needed names.

Pidge got up from her seat and came over, dropping down to sit on the floor between Hunk and Lance. Her otherwise slight weight had a bit of a punch to it, thanks to her armor being under her clothes.

Lance had decided upon their arrival that they were going to take a page from Adam’s book. He wanted everyone armored, but he didn’t want it obvious they were wearing it. So they were all wearing cadet uniforms borrowed from the school supply, sized up to make sure it wasn’t obvious what they wore underneath.

“Did you guys feel that?” Pidge asked. “I just got dizzy.”

“That’s kind of what an earthquake feels like,” Hunk agreed. “But that was no earthquake.”

“How do you know?”

Hunk gave her a look and she looked sheepish.

“Right. Earth element.”

“It came from the quintessence field,” Lance whispered. “That’s sort of what it feels like sometimes when Allura’s trying to teach me something new and she goes first.”

“Someone doing alchemy?” Hunk frowned. “Why would Pidge and I feel it?”

“Dunno. Through the Lions, maybe?” Lance supposed. “We’re all getting wrapped up pretty tightly with whatever’s in them.”

“If it was alchemy, it didn’t happen here,” Pidge pointed out. “You’re the only Earth native who can do that, and all of the Alteans went to the colony. Do you think we could be feeling magic that’s being used that far away?”

“Maybe?” Lance had no idea, but he tried to act a little more confident than he felt. In the absence of Shiro, Keith, and now even Adam and Allura, he was pretty much the acting leader. “If it’s powerful enough I guess it’s possible. The quintessence field is just an open ocean of energy, if you cause a tsunami on one side the other side might still get some waves.”

“Do you think it was Allura?” Pidge asked, biting her lip in concern. “She’s the strongest alchemist we know. If she had to use that much magic, maybe something bad happened.”

“We can’t worry about that,” Lance said firmly. “Shiro and Allura know what they’re doing. We can’t know what’s going on out there, so we can’t dwell on it. It will just distract us from doing what we need to do here.”

“I have a question we can probably focus on,” Hunk said.

“Hm?”

“Why did Kuro feel it?”

Lance looked back over at the others. They were still working quietly, unmoved by any strange feelings. The only people in the room who had felt the disturbance were those who were linked to Lions…and Kuro.

“Maybe because he’s a clone,” Lance guessed. “Don’t they have Altean DNA?”

“He’s not an alchemist though,” Pidge pointed out. “Or do you think maybe he is? Can you be a gifted Altean and not know it?”

“I don’t know, let me just consult my handy manual on Altean puberty,” Lance suggested. “Oh, wait.”

Pidge elbowed him, almost making him drop his tablet. He made a grab for it as the door opened again and Kuro returned.

He marched across the room and slammed the laptop he now carried down in front of Curtis, hard, making a bang that echoed through the mostly empty space.

Kuro snapped the laptop open and half-shoved Curtis out of the way, leaning over to run his fingers rapidly over the keys. Lance’s tablet screen went black suddenly, and so did the console screens the others were working on. A moment later every screen in the room, including the large wall monitor, flickered back on with the same display. It was a file directory for an unfamiliar database.

Curtis stared at for a moment then sat back in his seat, looking up at Kuro reproachfully.

“You told me you deleted this program,” he accused.

“Well, I didn’t,” Kuro answered sharply. “Sue me.”

He dropped back down into the chair he’d been sitting in next to his boyfriend. Curtis looked like he wanted to be angry but just wasn’t feeling it, shaking his head and turning to the laptop.

“This is the last Warchief’s backup drive,” Gail said in disbelief. “How did you get into this in less t8han thirty seconds?”

“Because he was already in it,” Curtis answered with a soft huff. “He’s in everything. Garrison, government, personal. Anything with an internet connection, it’s constantly being indexed into his own personal search engine and there are no Earth firewalls that know how to identify it and stop it.”

Pidge had gotten up and gone over to examine the laptop screen, watching with wide eyes as Curtis started going through the files.

“This is a standard Altean display layout,” she frowned, looking at Kuro. “How do you have access to Earth’s entire connected system? And with Altean tech? Most of the planet’s systems don’t even support Altean programming languages yet!”

“I’m smarter than you are,” Kuro answered defiantly. “Difficult as that may be for you to handle.”

He was in rare form with his usually mild attitude problem now on full display. Lance got up from where he sat and put a hand on Pidge’s shoulder to stop her from being pulled into a pointless argument.

“I don’t care how you did it,” Lance admitted. “I want to know _why_ you have access to all of this.”

Kuro’s gaze turned to him, and Lance didn’t need him to say a word to know what he was thinking. The “_who the hell are you to ask?_” was written clear across Kuro’s face; he didn’t answer to anyone, except perhaps Curtis and Shiro, and that included Paladins.

Kuro topped the look off with a rude hand gesture. Lance would have loved to say he had some authority to do something about it, but he was forced to accept that Kuro wasn’t going to answer him. He turned to Curtis instead.

“You knew about this?”

“Obviously, or I wouldn’t have called him out on not deleting it,” Curtis answered.

“And you didn’t—“

“Lance, I appreciate that you’re in a tough position right now,” Curtis interrupted, looking up at him over the laptop. “But please remember that the Paladins aren’t the only people in the universe who are involved in this war, and you aren’t the only ones who get to keep your secrets. Yes, I’ve been aware. No, I never mentioned it to you. No, you don’t need to know his reasons because no, he was never any threat. After everyone is back here safely we can argue about it, but at the moment please take that at face value and focus on the task at hand. Kuro’s activities are a THEMIS matter, not a Paladin matter.”

It was the nicest “mind your own damn business” Lance had been given by anybody who worked for the Garrison. He had always seen different law enforcement departments fighting it out over investigations on TV, but he’d never realised just how split they could be in real life. Curtis had basically just politely told him that this was out of his jurisdiction, which while possibly true was still very annoying.

But he didn’t have any leverage on it. Kuro had never actually been under Paladin authority, he had gone from Lotor to Iverson.

Hunk and Pidge were looking at him to see if they really should let it go. As much as Lance wanted to dig his heels in and demand more information right now, the harder truth was that sometimes other people drew lines that a leader had to respect.

But he _would _press the issue later. Especially now, in light of the fact that Kuro had a quintessence sensitivity they also hadn’t known about. There was apparently a lot that he wasn’t sharing.

Lance let a heavy breath out through his nose and gestured back to where they’d been sitting. He lowered himself back down against the wall and Pidge reluctantly followed, plopping down between him and Hunk again.

“What is even going on here right now?” Pidge whispered.

“We won’t like the answers to our questions, so Curtis is protecting his boyfriend from them,” Lance answered. “That’s fine. If it has to wait for Shiro to get back, then it has to wait.”

“Do you think we should be ready for him to try something?” Hunk wondered. Lance scoffed slightly.

“No, I doubt it’s that bad. I don’t think he’s _dangerous_, it’s just a little unsettling that we’ve been thinking of him as being mostly useless and a friendly nuisance always in the way, and now we’re finding out he’s not. It’s kind of our own fault, it’s not like we didn’t know how smart Shiro is.”

Lance looked back over at Kuro, whose confrontational mood was seeping away. He had moved his chair so he could hug Curtis from behind, resting his head against the back of the taller man’s shoulder as he worked. He thought the snappishness might have something to do with how upsetting the revelation was; Kuro was usually always so happy and nice, his simmering anger at everyone right now felt almost like a personal betrayal.

A look at his tablet told Lance that the screens had all gone black at once because Kuro had connected them to his laptop over the wireless. He had set his own computer up as a portal to give them all access, evidenced by the fact that Curtis, Gail, and Raina were all obviously looking at different things. Sarah had taken control of the main screen and was testing out how far in the Garrison the connection went, shuffling from security camera to security camera.

He had access to everything, and not just video but sound. And Lance had to assume that he had accessed it all completely under the radar, or else Iverson would have taken steps to close everything up. The scene up on the wall went from the nearby hallway to the quad, to the lobby in one of the dorms, to the hangars. At the last one, Kuro suddenly sat bolt upright.

“What are those?”

He sounded so urgent that Lance momentarily forgot about his attitude. Everyone looked up, searching the screen to see what was wrong. But as far as he could tell, it was just a view of the basement lab where Lotor had been working on Honerva’s mechs.

“Those are the two mechs we brought back from Colony One,” Curtis answered, looking up. “That third one is the one that attacked Earth right after the Paladins fought off Sendak.”

“Not those.” Kuro got up and practically scrambled over to the screen, standing on his toes to point at a rack in the corner of the lab. “Those. What are those?”

“Allura designed them,” Lance answered, uncertain of exactly why Kuro was so bent out of shape over some flight suits. “They’re the new flight armor for the mechs. She based it off the ones Honerva had the pilots wearing, but fine-tuned the connectors for more efficient quintessence handling. Not that it matters, they can’t be tested until we have actual Alteans back here to fly the mechs.”

Lance waited for some kind of snide comment, but Kuro only stared at the screen like he’d seen a ghost. He was white as a sheet and looked as if he might faint, until Curtis finally got up and led him back to his seat. They spoke softly, probably Curtis trying to figure out what was wrong, but Kuro didn’t seem interested in sharing.

Lance went back to his tablet. Hunk and Pidge were already on theirs, curiously poking around to see what they could dig up. Lance did the same, starting with the initial directory they’d been given access to.

He didn’t know what he was looking at for the most part. There were a lot of code names and a lot of short hand, things the last Warchief had only made the barest note of in case people like them came along and tried to snoop through his things. He got to the point of just randomly going through everything until he finally saw a file name that piqued his interest.

_Brazil Investigation_.

That seemed promising. Adam and Keith were down in South America, maybe this had some names of agents they could use as a starting off point. He clicked through, scrolling through a long list of further files that looked like they might have been dates. Underneath them all there were some other folders, but one in particular caught his eye. _Subjects_.

That had to have names.

Lance opened it, scanning through what was there in search of some document that looked like it might contain acting agents or investigators. What he found instead were documents with town names, and another folder called _Leverage Reference_.

He hit that one out of idle curiosity, and now was presented by documents that looked like they were names. But as he scanned them looking for one to start with, one in particular jumped out.

Adão Jacinto Chaira-Lobo.

That was a Portuguese name, which wasn’t surprising since these were allegedly people from Brazil. The English direct translation of all the words was Adam Hyacinth Steel-Wolf.

Or, if one used only name equivalents like a normal person instead of direct translation, and dropped the hyphenated name as Lance knew he must have done, Adam Jacinto Wolfe.

He opened it, completely forgetting about everyone else, and started to look through what was there. Some of it he recognized, some of it he didn’t. It was a weird mishmash of things Lance knew to be fact and things he had never known to be true, much of it still in that weird short hand that made it difficult to decipher.

“Curtis?” He called, scrolling through the pictures. “Can you look at this?”

“Just a minute.”

“No, I really need you to look at this right now,” Lance insisted. He got up and took his tablet over to the older soldier, showing it to him. “I don’t…understand this.”

Curtis took the tablet with a huff of annoyance and glanced at it. Lance could see the impatience fade away as he realized what he was looking at, and he started scrolling through it.

“This has his original Brazilian records,” Curtis frowned. “He never had those, he only ever had his visa and then his American citizenship documents.”

“Somebody had them,” Lance pointed out. “Specifically, you guys. But look at that birth certificate.”

“It says his birthday is in October, not March,” Curtis read out loud. “And that he’s two years younger than we thought.”

“Do Nixa age faster?” Hunk suggested, coming to join them. “Maybe that’s why the someone hid his real records?”

“It’s possible,” Curtis supposed. “It could also be an attempt to distance Adam Wolfe from Adão Lobo on paper.”

He transferred Lance’s tablet view to the wall monitor so everyone could see, and started to slowly go through the file. It told a very interesting and convoluted story, starting with the Brazilian birth certificate. His early medical records came next, listing the extremely rare blood type that they now knew was likely part of his alien heritage. Boarding school enrollment forms from a place located in Rio de Janeiro followed, listing him as being five years old even though if the birth certificate could be trusted he would only have been three that year.

He was enrolled under his given Portuguese name, and remained at the school for three years.

The quality of the paperwork changed after that. There was a transfer to a different Catholic boarding school, this one located in the far north of Brazil, and the first sign of the Anglicized new name. This wasn’t signed by Jacinta Lobo like the rest, but was marked as being filled out by a representative for her named Amanda Sosa-Flores.

“That was his mother’s assistant,” Curtis recalled. “I was there when the two of them came by a few times. I never knew Janet Lobo was his mother, I thought he’d been awarded a scholarship from her company and just took an interest in those students. But that Amanda woman…talk about an unholy bitch.”

“She was so far up Lobo’s ass, constantly,” Raina remembered. “I would’ve throttled her if it was me.”

He kept scrolling. There was an application for an American visa to come to the States, and an approved application for entry into the Galaxy Garrison Academy. More paperwork followed, citizenship forms that told of Adam’s expedited naturalization due to his very high scores and upcoming enlistment in the military. Curtis’ scrolling came to an abrupt stop when entirely different paperwork came up next.

“Second Judicial District Court, State of New Mexico, Children’s Court Division,” Lance read out loud. “In the matter of the Adoption Petition of Adam J. Wolfe, consent to adoption by birth mother.”

“I, Jacinta Chaira-Lobo,” Curtis continued, “am the biological mother of the minor child who is the subject of an adoption petition filed by Simon Acosta-Mendez.”

Curtis paged quickly through the file, stopping only after flipping through too many pages for Lance to count.

“There are six petitions for adoption by Mendez here, starting when Adam first came to the States,” he counted. “All of them agreed to by Lobo and all of them denied by the court.”

“Acosta-Mendez is also flagged in here for trying to leave the country with Adam,” Gail pointed out. “Spring break of his sixth year, he applied for a juvenile travel visa to take him to New Zealand. It was declined due to “security concerns,” whatever that means.”

Hunk and Pidge had followed the directory information and were perusing the file themselves on their own tablets. Hunk held up his to show the page he was on.

“Did you see this letter in here?” He asked. “Asset has been notified that all future petitions will be rejected until such a time as contract has been completed. Contractual obligations with regards to BABEL will be considered completed only with approval of asset’s handler. Leverage will remain in THEMIS possession until age of majority, upon which he will remain under surveillance until asset has fulfilled obligations.”

Lance didn’t know what that meant. Neither did Hunk, Pidge, or Kuro from the look of it, but the way Curtis looked over at the others, and the look on all their faces, said they had some inkling of what that meant.

“Are they calling Adam leverage?” Pidge ventured.

Curtis didn’t answer. He exited Adam’s file and chose another, scrolling quickly through it and finding a similar theme. Another, and another, and another, each told the story of a child being moved out of Brazil and into the United States, into the care of various state and military boarding schools. He went back out entirely, to the top level of the file, and began opening different folders with date headers. After he’d gone through about five of them, he handed the tablet back to Lance, rubbing his temple.

“The Warchief was investigating human trafficking in THEMIS ranks,” he announced. “Those files are all children who were taken from their parents by handler agents, moved up here where they could be watched easier. Then threatened to make “assets” do what the handlers wanted.”

“That sounds like Lobo never left the Brazilian special forces,” Gail murmured. “If she was saying she got attacked by an alien, and Babel approached her…”

“That would give a THEMIS agent the perfect opportunity to step in,” Raina finished. “Lobo realizes the only people who believe her are also a threat to her son, THEMIS promises to keep the kid safe if she just follows the relocation protocols and does what they say. Pretend she left the military behind, but keep doing what she did best and infiltrate Babel ranks since they’d welcome a victim of an alien attack with open arms.”

“If that’s the case, then she definitely fought it tooth and nail,” Curtis answered. “You don’t get visitation in situations like that, even if it’s once a year just to prove he’s alive and well and it’s heavily supervised by agents. They really wanted her cooperation to give her even that much.”

“She had billions of dollars at her fingertips and helped create State Department software she could give them a back door to,” Sarah reminded them. “Of course they wanted her cooperation. You know, what you said you suspected earlier…you’re probably right.”

“At this point I think we can say I’m definitely right. And daddy Nixa tried to come to baby Nixa’s rescue,” Curtis agreed. “On six separate occasions, only to be blocked. Probably trying to force a court case into the open, not realizing how effectively THEMIS could shut it down.”

“New Zealand is also one of the only two countries where we don’t have a presence,” Raina said. “If he couldn’t get custody legally he was going to sneak him out on vacation and disappear. Somebody had to be watching very closely to notice that application and tip off the handlers.”

“I would say all of that might be a very good reason why he would be pissed off at THEMIS,” Gail mused. “If he finally started picking off people standing between him and his family, and they didn’t know his motivation to know who he’d go after next, the most effective way to protect themselves is to label him a terrorist and turn everyone against him.”

“But why not just be honest and legally claim what was his?” Gail asked.

“Stop,” Lance demanded, holding up both hands. He was tired of looking back and forth between the four agents in the room while they lobbed half-statements back and forth that he didn’t understand. “I don’t know what you people are saying, and that’s starting to piss _me _off. Stop talking like we’re not here. Adam is a Paladin now, and that means that he’s under our jurisdiction. What the hell is going on?”

Curtis looked over at him, then back to Gail, Raina, and Sarah. He slowly sat back in his chair and turned it to face the three teenagers.

“Janet Lobo was admitted to a psychiatric facility because she claimed she was attacked by an alien. That was where she gave birth, and she was there for a few years after. It was assumed that she was extremely drunk or even under the influence of drugs at the time, and that she was so out of it she believed her attacker wasn’t human. Everyone involved in her care assumed Adam was a product of this attack.”

“I’m sensing a “but” here,” Hunk noted.

“But,” Curtis agreed, “If you go back and read the copies of Janet’s file that THEMIS has in its records, she never actually says that her attacker is the father of her child. And she never explicitly says she wasn’t already in an early stage of pregnancy when it happened. Only that she was attacked by an alien, full stop.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Lance complained. “If she was already pregnant, why would she let everyone think the guy who attacked her was Adam’s father?”

“Because I think by then she found out Adam’s actual father really was alien,” Curtis replied. “And to protect him, she didn’t want to name him.”

“And I think I know who she was protecting him from,” Sarah chimed in, lifting up her laptop and turning it so they could see the two pictures. “Fresh from the Warchief’s full agent roster: meet Carlos and Amanda Sosa-Flores. Secretly, THEMIS husband and wife team in charge of cultivating assets in Brazil. Publicly, brother and sister pair, one married to and one working for Jacinta Chaira-Lobo.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Shiro leaned against the thick glass window with his prosthetic arm, watching the doctors move around in their hazmat suits to tend to the people in quarantine. But this wasn’t the common area where the colonists were slowly being boarded onto the Atlas and cruiser, this was the officer’s medical bay.

Ziran had fallen shortly before their arrival back here, his exhaustion having hidden the first symptoms of illness. He was already pale and they had assumed the exoskeleton was the source of his fatigue and body aches, and he was now in a bed with a high fever and slowly slipping into delirium.

In a separate small glass room, Allura was seated on a bed of her own. She was at least upright, and although they were choosing to err on the side of caution her own symptoms seemed to be from biting off more than she could chew with the terraforming than from being infected.

Nikolaev was down and out, deeply asleep and still running a very high fever. The doctors said he tested positive for the as-of-yet unnamed virus, but he had been far more healthy and fit than the half-starved colonists and his body appeared to be fighting it off much better.

Aside from Shiro, who knew he couldn’t catch it thanks to Honerva’s genetic meddling, everyone else who had been around Ziran on the power station trip was also in the quarantine room. They were all together, sitting around a table having coffee rather than taking up beds they didn’t need.

Lotor, who was half-Altean, showed no signs of being sick. Neither did Romelle, who was not only full Altean but came directly from colony stock and didn’t have millennia of potential genetic drift to blame. None of the MFE pilots appeared ill either, despite being in close quarters with Ziran for more than eight hours. With how quickly this disease seemed to incubate, James should have been showing symptoms by now since he’d been at Romelle’s and Ziran’s side pretty much since their arrival on the planet.

As if on cue, Ziran started coughing violently, and both James and Romelle dropped the playing cards they were holding to go stand by the door of his small quarantine room. They both looked worried, and Shiro wished he had good news for them.

There was something odd about this disease, something he felt like he’d missed. Nikolaev had suffered the same level of exposure as everyone else, but he was the only human who’d gotten sick. Colonists were dropping left and right, but some Alteans seemed to have no trouble. Shiro had even checked with the cruiser, but out of the thousands of citizens from Colony One who were on board, only three were ill. And none of the three was in as bad a state as the Colony Two Alteans.

He had to assume that everyone had now been exposed. Ziran and that Altean doctor had both shown no symptoms, but they now knew that they had been carrying it. It was clearly airborne, and obviously able to survive on surfaces for at least a few hours. Regular practices like disinfecting objects and constantly washing hands had not worked to stop the spread of illness through Colony Two, so why was it working on the cruiser?

Shiro moved over to the comm set in the glass and pressed the button, a soft beep calling the attention of those who were sitting at the table.

“I’m going back into the colony,” he told them. “I need to see where this outbreak first started. Can Allura and Lotor be cleared to leave quarantine?”

“Only with full coverage,” the doctor leading the treatment told him. “Mask, gloves, the works. I think everyone’s been exposed by now, so the quarantine obviously isn’t working. But we still shouldn’t take any more risks than necessary.”

“I agree. And how’s Nikolaev?”

“If we were on Earth and I didn’t know to test him for this virus, I’d write him a doctor’s note and tell him to stay home from work for a week,” the doctor replied. “It’s definitely not pleasant and he’s certainly not comfortable, but with proper attention he’s also not at any risk of dying.”

“And Ziran?”

“At a much higher risk of dying,” the doctor confessed. “He won’t, thankfully, not now that there’s a medical staff equipped to deal with it, but if we weren’t here I don’t think he’d make it.”

“And they both have the same virus,” Shiro frowned. “Okay, get Allura and Lotor ready to go. I’m going to go suit up, just to be on the safe side.”

There was something that was bothering him slightly as he left the officer’s medical bay and returned to his quarters to shower for what was probably the third time since they’d gotten back from the power station. It was an overabundance of caution he knew, but he wanted to be safe. If this virus could survive on surfaces, that meant it could probably survive on his skin if he came into contact with someone infected.

He might not get sick, but it was possible he could carry and transfer it.

His armor had been disinfected upon their return, so that was waiting for him when he finished drying off, still turning over the problem in his head.

Nikolaev and Ziran had never been in direct contact. They’d never even seen each other, so he knew Nikolaev’s illness hadn’t come directly from Ziran. It had to have traveled via other crew members, ones who for some reason hadn’t gotten sick, but had given it to him upon contact.

It was entirely possible that Nikolaev wasn’t suffering as badly because he had a milder form of the virus, perhaps somehow weakened by the immune systems of those who’d passed it on to him.

Or maybe everyone on the Atlas _was _sick…and the weakest was just the first one to show symptoms that would eventually get worse.

The Atlas had only been on this planet for thirty-six hours, and Ziran and Nikolaev had only been ill and quarantined for the last twelve. The first crew member had gone down barely twenty-four hours after arrival on the planet, this virus spread like wildfire and incubated fast.

All the more reason to really dig into this now, before the Atlas potentially became the next site decimated by this developing pandemic.

Allura and Lotor were waiting for him when he disembarked, standing outside in the clean, fresh air that now enveloped the colony. They were standing back, keeping distance between themselves and where medical crews slowly but steadily continued to move the thousands of colonists to the ships. Both were wearing masks and gloves, and Allura was shivering.

“This planet is still freezing,” she complained as they finally headed inside together. “Even once it’s terraformed, it will take years for enough heat to be trapped by the atmosphere that it’s not a nightmare.”

“Perhaps,” Lotor allowed. “But they’ve been here for decades now, this planet has become their home even if it still needs to be tamed. It’s a place they can call theirs, and they’re not going to give up on it just because it’s difficult.”

It was warmer inside, thankfully, now that they had the power up and running. Surfaces that Shiro thought he’d seen frost on upon their arrival had now warmed up, and the colonists who were still physically healthy enough to render aid were helping medical teams move patients without the difficult confines of layers of winter clothes. Allura and Lotor weren’t the only ones in masks and gloves, it was pretty much the fashion here at the moment.

“They said the illness began when the final generators failed in the provision storage,” Lotor recalled. “When ice samples melted and presumably released a contagion. So I suppose that’s where we start.”

Ideally there would be a team here, ready to run a full forensic study of the provision storage. Unfortunately, the evacuation required all of the ships’ medical crews and then some, so anyone who wasn’t doing anything absolutely required to run the ships was helping to either move colonists or prepare quarters for them. It was a full-time job just dispensing the food supplies they’d brought, the levels of starvation here meant they couldn’t just hand the colonists food and send them on their way. Many of them had to be weaned back onto eating, starting with a liquid diet so their digestive systems didn’t go into shock and kill them.

The halls that lead to the provisions storage were empty and quiet, having fallen out of use when the colonists had started trying to avoid the source of the contamination. Everything was just as it had been left when the last person had sealed it up and evacuated the area.

Lotor used his override to unseal the doors, which were locked against entry but weren’t completely air tight and obviously hadn’t done anything to hold back infection. The room was something akin to a large storage garage, with long rows of shelves and freezer doors lining one wall. It was cold in here, but only from the lack of heat. Because it was so close to the living spaces, ambient warmth from the colonists’ attempts not to freeze kept the temperature here above optimal.

“The colonists we talked to said they moved as much as they could out of here and put it outside in a shaded gully,” Allura said as she wandered along a shelf that was empty save for the occasional box or sealed package of spoiled food. “They managed to keep some of their food good for a little longer that way.”

“But the ice cores had already melted by then,” Shiro frowned, approaching a freezer that looked like it was for scientific use rather than food storage.

There were metal containers, and a few bags of blood that had been left behind in the hurry to empty the room. Shiro often forgot that the colonists didn’t have healing pods, and their medicine was simply a slightly advanced version of Earth’s with some healing alchemy thrown in. Seeing so many things he recognized, blood bags and syringes and bandages and labeled lab cultures, reminded him what they were up against here.

“Are these the polar ice samples?” He wondered out loud, tugging lightly at the handle of a freezer that held rows of glass cannisters filled with water.

“Yes,” Lotor replied, coming to stand beside him.

He paused for a moment, then did just as Shiro had done, lightly tugging the door handle. Shiro reached up to run a finger along a strip of red tape that currently acted as a seal, with faded numbers written along it. Then he leaned forward to get a better look at the contents of the freezer.

One of the cannisters had in fact leaked, spilling its contents on the floor. But Shiro had another concern.

“Back in college, whenever we put a specimen into storage—or took one out—we filled out a log,” he said. “It was a clipboard that was hanging near the freezer. I’m guessing this red tape is their version of that here?”

“It is,” Lotor confirmed. “But the date written on it is about two months earlier than the power loss.”

“So this freezer hasn’t been opened since the last specimen was put in,” Shiro surmised. “That cannister might have leaked, and there may well be something in it, but none of that water has ever come into contact with the air in here.”

“The virus wasn’t frozen in the ice,” Lotor agreed. “It came from something else.”

“Shiro? Lotor?” Allura called from across the room. “I think I know where it came from!”

They left the freezer and headed toward her, and she came to meet them halfway. She was carrying a glass dish, one Shiro recognized as a specimen container from the Castle of Lions. He had never seen one like it before becoming a denizen of the Castle, and he certainly hadn’t expected to see one of that style here.

She was also carrying the two halves with one in each hand. It had been opened.

Even more damning, the label was written in English, a language the colonists here wouldn’t have understood. In Shiro’s neat, clear print it said, “_unknown pathogen_.”

“Oh no,” Shiro murmured, a sinking feeling in his stomach as he took the container from her to get a better look. “Oh, this isn’t good. How did this get here?”

“It was on a shelf with some of the other things I remember Lotor had stored on the Castle while we were working on the Sinclines,” Allura answered, pointing to the far wall. “He must have had some things in the cold storage and not realized he took it when he cleaned them out.”

“Are you saying I sent this illness here?” Lotor asked, looking positively ill himself. He started to reach for the container, but Shiro pulled it out of his reach.

“Don’t touch it, we have no idea if it’s still hot,” he warned. “It may be more contagious directly from the source than it is from the colonists.”

“Why would you have a deadly disease on the Castle of Lions?” Lotor asked incredulously. “And not even locked up? You had to have left it in the regular cold storage, none of my things were ever anywhere near any marked medical freezers!”

“There was nobody there but us!” Shiro defended. “How was I supposed to know you’d eventually be hitching a ride with Allura and storing your popsicles next to the fatal plague vial? It says that it’s a pathogen right on it!”

“In English!” Lotor exclaimed. “I had translators for speaking, I only learned to read that language in the last few months!”

“Arguing isn’t going to help anyone, or change anything!” Allura shouted them both down, stepping between them and pushing them apart. “We didn’t store it safely and Lotor didn’t pay enough attention when he was emptying that freezer! Nobody could honestly foresee that this would happen, it’s nobody’s fault!”

“What is it?” Lotor asked, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “Where did it come from?”

“It came from Allura,” Shiro answered, pulling a bag from the small satchel he had with him to seal the container inside. “After she revitalized a dying balmera, she exhausted herself so much that she weakened her immune system and got sick. She was bedridden for days, for a little while we weren’t even sure she would make it.”

“Shiro was sure it was something I’d caught from the Paladins, brought with them from Earth,” Allura added. “He took samples and he was trying to identify it, but he never could.”

“Whatever it was, she mutated it,” Shiro answered, closing up the bag. “I didn’t have the same resources on the Castle that I would’ve had on Earth, nothing to compare it to, so I was never able to identify it. I kept the sealed sample in case we ever got home, it was the first known example of Earth diseases being spread and changed by an alien race and I thought it might be important. But that was months before you ever came along, and I doubt the clone was programmed to care about making sure it was safely stored when you arrived.”

He stowed the sealed bag back in the satchel, taking a deep breath and leaning back against an empty shelf.

“Okay,” he tried to think. Now that they knew the immediate source, they also knew the ultimate source. “So even though this virus has changed its appearance and some traits in its species-hopping, before Allura it originated on Earth.”

“Did any of the Paladins get sick when she did?” Lotor asked.

“No,” Allura shook her head. “And we took care to keep Coran away from me. So perhaps some kind of cold that doesn’t affect humans badly but is deadly for us?”

“No, if that was the case it would be spreading like crazy on the cruiser, but it’s not,” Lotor answered. “Three Alteans out of thousands are ill, it’s not exactly the mass illness one would expect if that were the case.”

Shiro closed his eyes and ran through what they knew in his head. He spoke out loud, not to either of them in particular but just articulating what was going through his mind.

“Everyone on Colony Two is sick or at risk of getting sick,” he said. “We have one sick human on the Atlas, and three sick Alteans on the cruiser, each out of populations numbering in the thousands. The incubation period is very short but there are still people who aren’t ill, so not everyone who’s getting sick is catching it directly from somebody else…it’s being picked up from the air or on surfaces.”

“One population that’s at risk, and two that don’t seem to be,” Allura added. “What do the two populations have in common?”

“They both came here directly from Earth,” Lotor answered. “Something is being done differently there, medically, than is being done here.”

“Herd immunity,” Shiro said suddenly, opening his eyes. “The humans here and the Colony One Alteans aren’t getting sick in huge numbers because they have herd immunity, the virus can’t spread because it can’t get a foothold. And it’s obviously not a naturally occurring immunity, because only one group of Alteans has it.”

He pushed away from the shelf and started walking, and Allura hurried to fall in beside him, leaving Lotor to follow.

“And the reason only one group of Alteans has it,” she said excitedly, following his reasoning, “is that the first thing your government required for every one of us who arrived there…”

“...was the CDC’s full vaccination schedule,” Shiro finished for her. “To make sure none of you were killed by easily preventable Earth diseases.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Lotor complained, catching up to them. “Are you talking about those injections your government required we dispense before they would allow us permission to orbit?”

“Yes, there’s a set list of vaccinations all human children get starting at a young age, some of them with boosters later,” Shiro answered. “As long as we keep a vaccination rate of ninety percent or above, herd immunity protects anyone who can’t get the vaccine for health reasons. Diseases that used to decimate entire populations can’t get a hold and spread. They still exist, but we’re very close to eradicating a lot of them.”

“If we check the records, we’ll probably find that the three Alteans who fell ill weren’t able to get some of the vaccinations, possibly because of allergic reactions,” Allura told him. “And it’s likely that Niko got sick for the same reason.”

“Nikolaev’s medical file is the one we want,” Shiro told them as they made their way to one of the lesser used exits, in case they had picked anything up from the open container. “This is exactly the reason why all Atlas personnel are absolutely required to have vaccinations. The rules allow for only up to two missed vaccines, and only give exemptions in the case of allergy.”

“So Nikolaev will have had all of your Earth vaccines except two at the most,” Lotor deduced. “Which will narrow this disease down to only two possibilities. What then?”

“Then, luckily for everyone here, the Atlas has doses of vaccines aboard,” Shiro said. “Again, because humans accidentally spreading illness is exactly one of the things our space exploration planners feared. We’re equipped to reproduce the one we need…in a lot of cases, administering the vaccine even after infection can at least make sure the disease isn’t as deadly. The fact that it’s still infecting a human even after being mutated means we have a very good shot at the vaccine still working on it once we identify the right one.”

“We can save everybody else here,” Allura told Lotor, breaking out into a run as they stepped outside. “If we work quickly enough, nobody else has to die!”

Shiro was already paging the medical bay through the comms, requesting to have Nikolaev’s medical records forwarded to his email immediately so he could access them as soon as he was in the hangar. He took off after Allura with Lotor hot on their heels, tearing across the open space between them and the answer they hoped to find on the ship.


	7. Chapter 7

Keith lay stretched out on the ground on his stomach, idly scrawling shapes into the cement in front of him. Beside him, Adam sat cross-legged in the middle of a small explosion of phone and radio parts, courtesy of the morning’s miniature crime spree.

In addition to his shoplifting he had pickpocketed two phones and stolen some tools out of a construction van, and had done so with the ease of someone who was very familiar with petty crime. Given that Adam had always been wealthy as far as Keith knew, the skills had probably been honed purely for entertainment purposes.

Or for attention. But Keith couldn’t say anything about that, since he’d often done the same thing when he was younger.

Adam was very into what he was doing, the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he held two parts he was messing with up close to his face to see better. He reminded Keith of a mix between Hunk and Pidge almost, clearly loving what he was doing despite the dire circumstances.

Of course, they wouldn’t be in these dire circumstances if Keith had just put his foot down right from the beginning. Adam had just spent the last year and a half in a place where nobody else could be trusted, then had only been awake on Earth for less than two weeks.

He was under a ton of stress, both leftover from going up against Honerva and from suddenly finding out he was expected to pilot a hundred-ton battle machine on the front lines of an intergalactic war. In hindsight, Keith should have taken some responsibility for his team and cancelled the shenanigans as soon as Adam told him he’d been warned not to get on the plane.

“Maybe we should make a different call,” Keith said out loud, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

“Hm?” Adam was listening, but concentrating too hard to answer.

“Maybe instead of trying to make contact with the Lions we should reach out to Axel,” Keith clarified. “He’s in charge of a lot of stuff down here, maybe he has somebody around here who can help us.”

“I think if he was able to do that, he would have,” Adam reasoned. “His life is already in danger in this weird power game, every inch farther he sticks out his neck is an inch closer to a waiting guillotine.”

“Good point,” Keith supposed, going back to scrawling on the ground. If Axel bit it, it wasn’t just one guy dying in South America. There would be a whole other power vacuum there, and even more chaos. “What about Acosta-Mendez?”

“What about him?”

“He warned you about the plane,” Keith pointed out. “He obviously didn’t want you down here in the middle of this. And he must know more about what’s going on than we do.”

“That doesn’t mean he’d tell us,” Adam answered, flipping the parts over in his hands. “He’s always known more than he let on about a lot of stuff, it didn’t make him the kind of guy who liked sharing.”

Keith had thought about this a lot in the few hours since they’d flopped down on the ground behind this private library. They had been told Axel was an enemy, and that had turned out to be a blatant mistruth. Then they’d been told that Acosta-Mendez and Chaira-Lobo were enemies, but Acosta-Mendez had tried to warn them off danger.

So maybe this Simon guy wasn’t really on the level Curtis thought he was either.

Of course, he could turn out to be even worse than Curtis thought and had only wanted to keep them out of his business, that was also a lovely possibility.

Adam glanced up at him and must have seen the thoughtful look on his face. He let out a huff through his nose and dropped what he was working on to pick up another part and examine it.

“I already considered calling him,” Adam admitted. “But I called him a lot when I was younger and now I’m grown. At some point I’m going to have to manage to do things without asking him for help. And besides, when I tried to call him back from the Garrison, the number I had was disconnected.”

“Maybe you dialed wrong.”

“No, he was using some kind of cloning program to make it look like he was calling from a different number,” Adam answered.

He went back to playing with his radio parts. Keith went back to vandalizing the pavement. But the suggestion must have pushed a button or two, because every few minutes Adam would pause and pick up his phone, look at it for a moment, then put it back down. Eventually he picked it back up and didn’t put it down right away.

“I can’t make any calls anyway,” he reasoned, though Keith wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince him or himself. “As soon as my call connects somebody will probably be tracing the phone.”

“You could put it on airplane mode and just get the number out of it,” Keith supposed. He also wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be helpful or dissuade Adam from trying. “Then use the satellite radio when it’s ready.”

Adam shrugged. He put the phone back down, and went back to work on his radio.

Keith eventually left him to go wander around a bit, figuring they were safe for the time being. There wasn’t anything he could help with, and he didn’t want to distract Adam from his work.

Instead of walking brazenly down the street, Keith stuck to the little side roads. In some cases this meant walking across fields behind the yards of rows of small houses, generally keeping his head down and minding his own business so he didn’t draw anyone’s gaze.

He looked like a half-Galra, there was no way for him to hide that, and the last thing he wanted to do was cause panic in a small town that was still rebuilding after the occupation.

It was way too hot here for his tastes, he could definitely say he hated it here. The people were fine and he was indifferent to the cultural differences, it just didn’t feel right for it to be hot this close to Christmas. And for as wild as people tended to believe he could be, he was also more of a small city kid than anything. He missed large stretches of concrete and shopping malls and the kind of roads he could ride his motorcycle on.

Even the admittedly beautiful landscape as he wandered past a small sign marking the end of town didn’t make him feel any better about being here. He missed the dry heat of the desert, the humid heat of this jungle country was not something he was adjusted to.

He was eventually forced to deduce that there was nothing of particular interest for him to find here, and that he shouldn’t wander too far for too long since he couldn’t easily contact the person he was with. After a while, he wandered back to where he’d left Adam and found him packing up his mess.

“Is it working?” Keith asked, picking up the horrendous Frankenstein’s monster of a radio, not even certain what any of the unidentified parts did.

“I don’t know, I haven’t tried it,” Adam admitted, dumping the last of his excess parts into the plastic shopping bag. “The phones and batteries are charged, we should go somewhere quiet and give it a try.”

They headed toward the other end of the small town’s Main Street, in the opposite direction of Keith’s earlier wanderings. While they walked, Adam took out his phone again and looked at it several times.

Keith couldn’t read his expression. He was wearing his glasses and the lenses had darkened in the sun, leaving his eyes invisible. What he did get from the action was that Adam was still thinking about trying to call back Simon.

“Why’d you call him so much when you were younger?” Keith asked. He didn’t want to encourage or discourage any particular course of action, because right now he simply didn’t know anything about Adam’s family except what had been said to them by Curtis. “You said you used to call him all the time and you didn’t want to do it again."

Adam shrugged.

“Lots of things,” he answered, painfully obvious in his attempt to sound indifferent. “I was never allowed to call Janet directly, you would’ve thought her phones were tapped by the tabloids or something with the way she acted. There were specific channels I could go through, and most of the time those were managed by her assistant Amanda. Janet would call me from a blocked number sometimes, but it was like…twice a year, if that, and I wasn’t allowed to call it back.

“But I guess nobody really paid much attention to Simon. He was a good friend of hers, but his job took him all around the world pretty often. No wife, no kids, no family that I know of, so no drama he had to hide, I suppose. He was in the States a lot on business, so if I needed something I had a much better shot at getting in touch with him than Janet.”

“So he was around a lot, huh?” Keith asked. “That sounds kind of like what Shiro was for me.”

“A little different than Takashi and you,” Adam replied. “Simon made it clear that he wasn’t one of my little friends, he was an adult and I was a kid and I didn’t have to like everything he did to accept it. If I got in trouble and had to call him to help get me out, I knew I was getting grounded. Or worse. The only two people who ever had the balls to punish me and follow through enough that I actually learned something from it were Iverson and Simon. Honestly, I’m only even where I am because he somehow always knew when report card time was even if I tried to hide it, and he always just happened to be in the area when they came in. If I didn’t do well in school, I had to answer for it. And if I hadn’t done well in school, Takashi never would have noticed I existed.”

Keith had a hard time believing that. He only had to look at how positively disgusting Shiro and Adam were when they thought nobody was looking to know that Shiro would have eventually noticed Adam no matter what.

“Do you trust him?” Keith wondered. “I guess the last time you even saw him was before the invasion, right? After the occupation and you not being here it’s been a couple years and you haven’t really talked to him. Do you think he’s one of the bad guys?”

“I think I trust Curtis,” Adam replied. “And I believe that Curt believed what he told us in that briefing. Simon has always been a man I wouldn’t choose to go up against if I could help it.”

“That’s not an answer to my question,” Keith called him out. Adam slowed down as they reached the end of the main business area and turned, crossing a patch of grass into some trees he knew would let out in a clearing where they’d rested earlier.

“I guess he could be one of the bad guys,” Adam said after a moment. “He’s perfectly capable of it, it’s not hard to imagine. But I don’t think he’d ever hurt me, personally. So the answer is yes, I trust him, even if he is one of the bad guys.”

They hit the trees and split up a bit, going around a patch of underbrush and meeting back up a few yards away. It occurred to him as they picked their way along that there was likely another reason why Adam was reluctant to reach out to Simon.

Adam said he trusted Simon not to ever hurt him. He didn’t say he trusted him not to hurt Keith.

They reached the clearing they were headed for, a large area that had a faded and broken advertisement at one end illustrating that the field had been cleared and leveled for the building of a new housing development. The Galra had come before the building had started, and the grass and flowers of the area had reclaimed the open space to turn it into a great swathe of green.

They went about ten yards out from the tree line, to where a pile of old building supplies had rusted and rotted in the elements since being abandoned. Adam laid out the satellite receiver on top of an old piece of unused sewer pipe and turned it on. After a few minutes of fiddling, reading a display that Keith was completely unable to understand, Adam calibrated one of the stolen phones to it and started searching for a signal.

“How will you know if we’ll make contact with the Lions?” Keith asked.

“The Altean signals are way beyond anything that’s going to be broadcasting on Earth,” Adam answered, watching the readouts as he slowly turned a dial. “There are only ten known systems that will be sending and receiving those signals…the Lorelia, the Atlas, three Sinclines, and five Lions. The Lions are tuned into the defense satellite web that was deployed a few months ago, so we bounce a signal off a Garrison satellite and against a couple of those, and one of the others is going to pick it up. We’ll know we made contact when they answer.”

He calibrated the second phone and handed it to Keith, then took the transmitter and stowed it inside the pipe so they didn’t have to carry it in their hands. They started walking slowly across the field, keeping toward one side for unease with being caught too far out in the open.

“Hailing the Paladins,” Keith tried into his phone as they walked. “This is Keith, calling the Paladins, do you copy?”

There was nothing. The nature of the method they were using left the opposite end of the line dead, making him feel like he was talking to nobody.

“Calling giant space cat handlers,” Adam tried. “Anybody listening?”

It was beginning to look as if their radio didn’t work. Finally, after another minute or so, he heard a beep on the other end of the line.

“Keith! Adam!”

The familiar voice brought a wave of relief. Not just for him, he could see it on Adam’s face as well.

“Lance!” Adam exclaimed. “Thank God. We really need a—”

“Babe,” Keith interrupted, putting a hand over Adam’s mouth. “Your friend is really weird. Pick me up, I’m scared.”

He felt something wet and let out a squeak, pulling his hand away when Adam licked it and wiping it on the other man’s sleeve.

“I take it back, he’s not just weird. He’s disgusting!”

“Where are you two?” Lance asked excitedly. “I’ve been trying to track you since your plane made the emergency landing! Why the hell would you turn off the tracker?”

“We’re in Brazil,” Adam answered. He was completely indifferent to Keith’s disgust. “It’s a long story. The short version is that Babel isn’t a threat anymore, they were pretty much wiped out in the occupation. Axel Russo’s real name is Jaime Riviera, he’s the THEMIS Lieutenant General of the SA-1 region. Tell Curtis’ team they need to use Ghost protocols to reach out to him.”

“Tell them to be really careful,” Keith added, becoming serious. “There’s apparently a huge power vacuum going on with THEMIS, and the handful of bad apples is fighting it out to take over.”

“Yeah, we’ve figured some of that out on our own,” Lance replied. “We ditched out on our world tour when we realized it was just a distraction to keep us away. We also found some…other stuff that should probably be talked about face to face. Can you still not call Black or are you running around on foot on purpose? Where are you? I’ll come and get you.”

“We’re pretty much in the middle of Brazil, in a town about a mile south of the Amazon river,” Adam replied.

“I’ll activate the tracker,” Keith offered. “I still have that with me.”

“Not yet!” Lance said forcefully. His tone made Keith and Adam look at each other in concern. “It’s gonna take me a bit to get out of the base and call Red, she’s still parked down in Australia. Do me a favor, okay? Make sure you’re somewhere safe, then wait fifteen minutes before you activate it. By the time you do, I should be over Brazil and looking.”

“Okay,” Keith agreed without argument.

With a sinking feeling, he began to really understand that it wasn’t just him and Adam who might be in danger right now, and this time that danger didn’t come from outside aliens. It was human beings, their own people, who were trying to get rid of them and take their ships.

“Lance…be careful, okay?” He said sincerely. “We’re okay, and we’ll be okay for a little while more. But watch your back, all right?”

There was a pause, and he expected to get a sarcastic reply. But instead, Lance sounded far more serious than Keith was used to.

“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll watch my back, and Hunk’s and Pidge’s, until we’re all together and safe again. You guys be careful too, I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay. Bye.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say something further, but he left it at that. There was an audience right now and he didn’t want to get too personal, even if Adam would probably understand. Keith knew he shouldn’t feel so hopeless and sentimental in the first place, but he couldn’t help it. Shiro and Allura were gone, off helping Lotor. His mother and Kolivan had been planning a trip to meet with some other new Blades, if they hadn’t left yet it was possible they were in danger just by virtue of being Galra. Matt was still here with Pidge, Hunk and Lance, but it felt like their support system was quickly falling away in the face of an unstoppable secret special forces with a worldwide reach.

He ended his transmission and slid the satellite phone into his back pocket. He had felt this nervous about his situation before, but never on his own home planet.

“Fifteen minutes, then we set it off,” he said, pulling the tracker out of his pocket and turning to Adam. “Then do our best to try and get Black and Blue running. What’s wrong?”

Adam wasn’t looking at him. He was looking across the field, standing taut and still like a deer that had just caught sight of a hunter. Keith followed his gaze but didn’t see anything except trees.

“Adam?”

“Just inside the tree line,” Adam whispered. “Three meters to the left, near the low branches. Try not to move quickly.”

That was not an inspiring recommendation. Keith turned his head slowly, his eyes searching the area Adam indicated. He didn’t see anything at first, until the person standing there shifted slightly to look around the field.

She was tall, definitely taller than Keith and maybe a few inches shy of Adam, with skin so pale she looked almost completely white from here. Her black hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck but he could see it was long from where the ends peeked out from behind her camo jacket.

Even with her pallor she blended with the environment, and he never would have seen her if he hadn’t been pointed in the right direction.

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know,” Adam answered, but the way he squinted said he was lying and at least thought she looked familiar. “But she’s not alone. She was just signing to somebody on this side of the field.”

“Where?”

“Our right.”

As Keith watched, the woman signed again. He didn’t know what the signals meant, but they were fluid and well-practiced.

“She’s telling somebody to hold,” Adam frowned. “They’re pack hunters, there’s probably more than one over here. We may be surrounded.”

“Pack…?”

Keith looked behind them, scanning the trees and backing closer to Adam. There was only one humanoid species he knew of that he’d been told were pack hunters. He understood immediately that the other pilot’s expression was one of recognition. He apparently knew other Nixa when he saw them.

“Back to back?” Keith asked, drawing his gun.

“Yeah,” Adam agreed, drawing his own. They turned sideways as one, their backs together, sweeping the trees on either side of them. Keith scanned the quiet greenery, and thought he saw something move.

“Got one,” he announced, leveling his weapon.

“Same,” Adam answered. “Not coming closer, just watching.”

Keith saw movement and glanced across the field. The woman who was apparently playing their spotter had stepped out from the trees she was standing near. She moved out into the open, raising both of her hands briefly before making some more gestures.

“Is she saying something?” Keith asked, nudging Adam. He reluctantly pulled his eyes away from the trees to look.

“She’s asking us to come meet her out in the open.”

“So you understand all that?” Keith frowned. “What is it? ASL?”

“No, it’s their language, not ours. I learned some of it when I was little, when I couldn’t talk. Always thought I’d just made it up when I couldn’t find anyone else who knew it, though.”

“Should we go out? Or make a break for it in the trees?”

“We don’t know how many are in the trees,” Adam pointed out. “If we spotted two, it’s because they wanted us to spot two and be herded in a third direction toward ones we don’t see.”

“Do they know you’re one of them?” Keith asked, hoping that might mean something. Even if Adam was only half, maybe that might deter them from deciding they made decent prey.

“Oh, definitely. I know that woman, I’ve seen her before. Keep your gun up.”

He felt Adam move and glanced quickly back, watching him holster his weapon and slide the satellite phone into one of his pockets. He held up both of his hands so everyone around them could see they were empty.

“I’m going to start walking out there. Keep at my back and keep your weapon level. I don’t know if it will do anything, they might just shoot us from a distance. But it’s worth a try.”

“It’s worth a try,” Keith snorted under his breath, beginning to back out of the trees as Adam started walking. He swept the area, keeping the gun moving back and forth, only steadying it when they were several yards from the tree line and nothing could come at them without being seen.

As they moved farther out, Keith lowered his weapon. He felt Adam touch his back to bring him to a stop less than halfway across the clearing.

“She’s coming out,” Adam murmured. “She has something she wants to bring over. It looks like a phone.”

“Yeah? Well some others are coming out too,” Keith said nervously, his eyes darting back and forth as other people started moving to the edge of the tree line where they’d be visible.

There was a man who looked a lot like the woman, pale skin and dark black hair. Another man, a little taller, had dark brown stripes on lighter brown skin and dark crests peaking out through brunette hair, showing through the strands in curls that looked like a crown. A woman with a blue-ish complexion started at them with pure white, pupil-less eyes, pointed ears showing thanks to her purple undercut.

They were all different colors and shapes, but in a way they all looked the same. The same chin, the same cheekbones, the same tall stature, the same golden eyes. He sized them up, looking from one to the next, trying to decide if they were a threat or had simply come to investigate the newcomer.

But the roar of wind as a nearly-silent helicopter came up over the tree line diverted all of Keith’s attention away from the Nixa. He threw up an arm to shield his face from the dirt flying at him, and the ground exploded around them as guns started to fire.

Keith felt Adam grab his arm and start dragging him. He was blinded by the flying debris and had to rely on the other man as a guide, doing his best to run without being able to see. He could hear voices, and didn’t need to look back to know there were probably soldiers rappelling down to the field.

The ground under his feet changed from grass to roots and brush and he knew they were back in the trees. Keith did what he’d come to rely on over the last few years and reached desperately to Black to call his Lion to him, but the block remained steadily in place and he was met only with an internal silence.

The stop they made was sudden and Adam threw him to his knees. Keith wasn’t sure what was going on until he felt a hand holding his chin firmly and fabric on his face.

“Hold still!” Adam hissed, scrubbing at Keith’s eyes with his sleeve. He paused after a few quick motions and held up a hand. “How many fingers?”

“Three,” Keith croaked, pulling his face free and wiping some of the tears from one eye, glad he could finally see. “What the hell is going on?”

“Soldiers,” Adam answered, sitting up straighter to look past him, back behind them. “THEMIS. The Nixa took off when they showed up, not sure where. Did you set off that tracker?”

“No,” Keith shook his head as they both got back up to their feet. “It’s still in my pocket, I never touched it.”

“They tracked us to Axel, they tracked us here,” Adam said in frustration. “How are they following us?”

“I don’t know, but we better move,” Keith replied, starting to run and pulling Adam along with him. “They know Axel probably told us what’s going on, and I really don’t think they want us making it back to New Mexico alive to tell anyone.”

“North is the only way we can go,” Adam called as they sped up, spurred on by the sounds of people crashing into the trees behind them. “To the river. The problem is, once we hit the Amazon we’re screwed.”

“Can’t we swim it or something?” Keith asked, ducking a low branch that almost whipped him across the face.

“It’s a river, not a stream!” Adam exclaimed. “It runs anywhere from sixty feet to over three hundred feet deep depending on where you are, and it’s _miles_ wide! Chances are pretty good that if we end up in it, we’re as dead as they want us to be.”

For some reason, it had never occurred to Keith that a river could be that huge. He had been picturing the rivers he’d seen up in the States, the ones where people could see the other side and make it across if they were strong swimmers. The Amazon sounded very much like a body of water they definitely wanted to avoid.

It was way too hot, and he wasn’t in the kind of shape it took to run through dense forest. They were near enough to civilization that Keith wouldn’t call the trees they ran through a jungle, but it was definitely a challenge he wasn’t prepared for. It was hard to keep moving quickly and still keep close to Adam, it was as if the terrain was forcing them apart.

At one point he looked to his left and had to look up to spot the other man, only realizing their paths had diverged too much now that there wasn’t time to go back.

_Just have to keep going_, Keith told himself. _Get somewhere I can safely activate the tracker and wait for Lance to get here_.

* * * * * * * * * *

“You guys stay here and help out Gail if she needs it,” Lance ordered Hunk and Pidge, pulling his uniform sleeve back down as the communication ended. “It’s still pretty likely that whoever wanted to get their hands on the Atlas will still make a move to try and pry the Lions away from us. Stay together, try to lay low. The fewer people who know we’re here, the better.”

“Are you sure you should be going out alone?” Pidge asked critically. “If something’s really going down, maybe we should stick together.”

“Under any other circumstances, I’d agree. But out of the three of us, I’m the one who’s best at sneaking out of this place without getting caught.”

Hunk and Pidge were forced to agree, since it was Lance who was responsible for dragging them out and off the property at night. They went back to their consoles and he let himself out of the communications room to creep down the quiet hallway.

They’d been hold up inside all night, going through the Warchief’s roster and matching names to public records. They were ruling out THEMIS agents who had died, and forming a pool of possible living threats they had to look at.

Lance wasn’t the first one to have left the room, though. About an hour and a half ago, Curtis had almost taken a fall while crossing the room, and Kuro had had enough. He was far stronger than Curtis and had physically removed him from the room, telling them he was taking him to rest in one of the break rooms.

It wasn’t Christmas break yet, but as Lance left the locked down hallway and stepped out into what should have been a more populated area what he found was an eerie emptiness. There were no students in the halls, no sounds of teachers’ voices coming through the doors and echoing through the space. Frowning, he turned down one of the classroom hallways and peeked through the windows in a few.

Empty. Some of them had things written on the board, and there were notebooks on tables and backpacks in chairs, but no people.

But there was one telling fact: everybody had taken their coats.

That made it pretty clear that students had been evacuated, and probably not too long ago. It was the kind of thing Lance remembered from fire drills, except there had been no alarms sounded.

Students had been removed from the premises quietly. But why?

He darted back the way he’d come, throwing himself through the door to the fire stairs and pounding up to the next level. Slipping out quietly, he moved into the wing where officers and soldiers would be doing their daily jobs.

There was noise and life here, though not as much as usual. As he walked down the hall he saw people in offices, and when he looked out a window he could see some soldiers being run through drills.

But it was still quieter than normal, even with the thousands of Atlas staff currently off world. Nobody else seemed to notice anything, but Lance had a bad feeling.

“Hey!” A man called from behind him. “Cadet! Get over here!”

Lance had a split-second decision to make. He didn’t recognize the voice, so it was possible whoever was calling him didn’t know who he was immediately by sight. He could either be honest, or he could lie.

In light of the fact that he was very, very uncomfortable right now, Lance chose to lie.

He shifted quickly, his skin lightening to the same shade as Pidge’s and Matt’s and his eyes shifting to a similar light brown. His Altean marks washed away into the pale complexion, and he hoped as he turned around that he wouldn’t be recognized.

It was a Major Lance didn’t recognize. He approached quickly, his eyes scanning the other soldiers around them as if he found them suspicious.

“What are you doing in this wing?”

“Uh…I had a meeting this morning,” Lance tried. “Commander Duchesne gave me detention for filling my roommate’s socks with ants.”

“Well, you can’t be here,” the man insisted, in a tone that said he not only hadn’t listened to a word Lance had said but that he also didn’t care what the reasoning was. “Out.”

Lance let himself be herded to the elevator, keeping his head down when they arrived back downstairs. Alarms went off in his head when he wasn’t sent off on his own once he was back in Academy territory, but was steered down a hallway that lead toward the auditorium.

“Go,” the soldier ordered as they reached this hallway, where a group of students was filing quietly out the exit across from the auditorium, under the watchful eyes of teachers.

Lance obediently headed down the hall and joined the crowd of students, still keeping his disguise up and his head down. He had fully intended to leave the grounds to call Red anyway, and he had to investigate this to see what was going on.

The cadets were shuffled out the door single file, where a couple teachers and a bunch of soldiers were keeping them silent and waving them along the side of the building. They went down around the auditorium and past the dorms—which Lance assumed had already been emptied—as if intentionally avoiding anywhere the Garrison staff still in their offices would see.

It didn’t escape Lance’s notice that most of the soldiers moving the students were not teachers. He saw maybe two or three that he could identify as teaching classes, but the rest of the teaching staff was curiously absent.

Which begged the question…if they weren’t in their classrooms, and they weren’t out here with the cadets, where were they?

Lance was not the most observant of people when it came to others. He had pretty low emotional intelligence if he didn’t have a specific interest in whoever he was speaking to. More often than not he crashed and burned in conversations and never even noticed things going south. But when it came to strategies of war, he was a little more alert.

Soldiers he did not recognize immediately were moving cadets out of the base, and being very careful not to let soldiers Lance did recognize see what was going on. Adults Lance knew, ones who should be out here supervising these kids because they were their students, were nowhere to be seen and their classrooms were empty.

In short, potential collateral damage was being removed from the danger zone, and anyone who might sound the alarm had already been taken care of somehow.

He was pretty sure he was looking at the beginning stages of a coup.

Lance hustled, trying to get to the final destination quickly so he could slip away without being seen. He blended right in with the other confused teenagers who were hurrying along, anyone taking out a phone having it confiscated by the watchful soldiers. Lance hugged himself as he moved, trying to better hide that he had armor on under the school uniform he wore, pretending he was cold even though that same armor kept him comfortable.

After a few minutes, he found himself let out into the open field across from where the Lorelia had been settled. Lance let himself be pointed to a spot with other students and shuffled around to the back of the group, still keeping his head down. The other kids didn’t notice him either, most of them too preoccupied with wondering what was going on.

“Mayday! Mayday!” Lance whispered, raising a hand to cover his mouth and tilting his arm so his sleeve fell down a bit and exposed his wrist mic. “Pidge? Hunk? You guys there?”

“Here,” Hunk answered. “What’s wrong? You forget something?”

“No, there’s an emergency,” Lance hissed. “All the students are being evacuated from the base in secret. There are a bunch of soldiers out here getting them grouped up, and I think they did something with a bunch of the teachers!”

“Outside where?” Pidge asked. Lance could hear her tapping keys to pull up security video.

“In the field across from where the Lorelia was. Some kids are still coming from behind the auditorium.

“I don’t see anything,” Hunk murmured. “Nothing’s coming up on the cameras.”

“I’m personally standing here,” Lance said irritably. “The whole school is here. How can you not see anything?”

“Somebody must have put a looping feed on the server,” Lance heard Gail say in the background. “Look at that screen…if you watch, I’m going to bet that same soldier will walk across the screen again in a minute.”

“Use Kuro’s program!” Raina called. “Is he still logged directly into the cameras instead of the server?”

“Got it!” Sarah exclaimed. “Holy shit.”

“Everything’s empty,” Pidge said nervously.

“Not everything. Look!”

Lance heard some murmuring, and slowly backed away from the other students so he could hear better.

“What’s going on?” He demanded.

“They’re starting on the lower floors,” Hunk said worriedly. “One hallway at a time, soldiers are moving through and taking everybody by surprise. Getting them on the floor and cuffing them.”

“I’m activating the overrides Curtis installed on this door,” Raina said. “It will lock them out, but the problem is that it will also lock us in. This is a secure room that’s only meant to have one exit. Once they know we’re here, we’re not escaping.”

Lance chewed his lip, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He wished desperately that Shiro was here, or Adam, or Keith. He’d been left in charge a couple times before, but never when the enemy was so hard to distinguish and lives besides those of the Paladins might very well be taken.

“Call Curtis,” Lance requested. “Let him know what’s going on.”

“Gail tried as soon as we saw the video,” Hunk said. “He’s not answering. He looked pretty bad so he might just have his phone off, but I think we have to assume he and Kuro will have to be rescued and aren’t any help at the moment.”

Lance groaned, running his hand through his hair. He leaned back against the fence and glanced over at the other students, lowering his head and turning away when a soldier passed by. He watched until the man finished yelling at two girls who were laughing too loud and left, then wandered a little farther from the group.

As he did he saw someone ahead, looking around furtively before ducking down and disappearing from sight.

Montgomery.

“Hunk, Pidge…do you guys see someone sneaking in from over here on camera?”

“No,” Pidge replied. “But some of the view is obstructed by trees. Why?”

“No reason,” Lance answered, hurrying down the fence toward where he’d seen Montgomery disappear. “Is Keith’s motorcycle still parked over in the student lot or was it moved to the hangar?”

“Still in the student lot.”

Lance reached the spot he was looking for. A quick glance said nothing was out of place, but when he leaned down he could see that the bottom of the fence had been cut away from the post. It wasn’t new, but he found it hard to believe students would have made themselves an escape route as far back as the occupation. This had to have been in the last six months or so, after life returned to normal and kids once again became kids.

“Guys, stay in the comm room and go on lockdown,” Lance ordered. “It will take the Lions less than a minute to get to us, so leave them where they are for now…they can’t do anything for us as long as there are people from our side in that building. Pidge, keep Green stealthed. The longer we can stop them from knowing we’re here, the better.”

“What are you going to do?” Hunk asked.

“I’m going to grab some backup and get you out of there without anyone ever knowing there’s nobody in there,” Lance answered, ducking down to crawl through the fence. “Get everything packed up and ready to go. Don’t leave any signs we were in there last night.”

He ended his transmission and struggled to his feet, bounding across the small open space between him and a wall of the base. Lance crept along the side of the building until he reached the corner, where Montgomery was peeking around to watch some soldiers coming and going.

He summoned his bayard, and pressed the muzzle to the back of her head.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he commented. “I was wondering how you snuck on base to get those pictures of me and Keith without having clearance.”

“Do you really want to threaten me?” Montgomery asked, glancing back. Still, she made sure not to make any sudden moves. “All I have to do is scream and you’re swarmed with those guys.”

“All I have to do is pull this trigger and you’re a stain on the wall, so I still win,” Lance replied. “Who are they?”

“How should I know?”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Investigating,” Montgomery replied, annoyed. “Dos Santos gave me a call early this morning and said something weird was going on. I told him I’d come meet him to see if it was anything of interest, but when I got here and called him he didn’t answer. When I saw the evac going on I decided to sneak to his office and see if he was there.”

Lance scoffed. He raised his gun to rest on his shoulder, but didn’t put it away.

“You want me to believe you’re just here checking on your boyfriend? Why do I feel like it’s more likely you’re trying to be the first one to spill whatever’s going on here to the papers?”

“I don’t care what you think if we’re being perfectly honest,” Montgomery shot back. “Maybe it’s not so obvious to the golden group and their lucky friends, but this world is a shithole for the rest of us. Gossip pays the bills, and I’m not going to apologize for going where the money is.”

“Uh huh,” Lance muttered. “What makes you think your boy isn’t part of this whole thing?”

“Dos Santos?” Montgomery asked, giving Lance a look. “I love him to death, but Dos Santos is a freaking idiot. An idiot who has access to a lot of correspondence while he’s working for top officers. I’m more worried he found something he shouldn’t have and got killed. He doesn’t like your lot any more than I do, but he’d never let himself get pulled into treason.”

“Is that what you think is going on here?” Lance asked, gesturing around the corner with his head. “Treason?”

“I think the few soldiers I see out there who I recognize are the kind of people I wouldn’t trust even if it was necessary,” Montgomery returned. “And Admiral Iverson isn’t with them. What’s the point of taking over a random military base just for funsies? They’re probably going to lay in wait for you all and the Atlas to get back so they can take all your ships and use them to blow up the government or something.”

That was actually a pretty valid take, Lance had to admit. He hadn’t really been sure why THEMIS sects would want the Atlas or the Lions, but the fact was that they were literally the most powerful weapons in the universe along with Sincline. Even the Galra factions would think twice about trying to overthrow forced military rule on Earth with those in the new government’s hands.

He leaned out a little bit to get a peek around the corner. Armed soldiers were at the entrances to make sure nobody got in, and probably to shoot anyone who tried to get out.

“You got a lot of pictures of me,” Lance said, pulling back out of sight. “Which means that thanks to being a former teacher, you know how to get around here without being seen. I need you to get me to the student parking lot, ASAP.”

“I’m in the middle of something here,” Montgomery answered. “Get there yourself.”

Lance sighed and pulled his gun off his shoulder, pressing it against her forehead.

“Look, I’m not in the mood,” he said harshly. “And I may only be a teenager as far as you’re concerned, but I’ve shot a lot of people. Nobody is going to look at your hollowed out skull and think I was the one who did it in the middle of a military coup. You can either help me out and I can put in a good word for you with Shiro to _maybe_ get you a press pass for the wedding on Arus, or I can give you fatal plastic surgery instead of leaving you behind to rat me out when you’re caught.”

Montgomery narrowed her eyes. Lance squeezed the trigger, making the gun begin powering up with a soft whine.

“Your call,” he said. “I don’t have forever.”

She blinked first, for which Lance was thankful. He honestly wasn’t sure himself if he would pull the trigger or not, but he knew the chance of her being left dead rather than risking the lives of everyone inside by squealing on him was definitely higher than zero.

“There’s a basement window that opens into the boiler room,” she said, turning to go back the way they’d come. “One of the janitors disconnected the alarm from it years ago so he could go down there to take smoke breaks without getting caught. There’s a maintenance crawlspace that starts in there, it covers half the building for servicing power lines that run into the Atlas hangar and underground labs.”

“It lets out at the student lot?” Lance asked.

“Near there,” Montgomery answered. “But that’s as far as I’m taking you.”

“That’s fine,” Lance replied, dismissing his bayard and following her along the wall. “That’s as far as I need you to go.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Adam realized too late that Keith had veered off to the east, forced away from him when they’d had to part to go around a rock outcropping that had resulted in one going to higher ground and the other to lower. Now Keith’s path was taking him down toward the base of the hill they were on, and Adam’s was taking him upward.

That meant they were probably farther east than he’d originally thought. Most of the land around the river was flat as travelers went west, but its eastern end had some high points that weren’t exactly mountains but were still somewhat jagged terrain. Adam was headed toward higher ground, which was the last thing he needed if his memory served.

Brazil was a huge country, and he was by no means familiar with all of it. But having an archaeologist grandfather who had taken him many places, and he had made many stops in his early years in villages and towns along the Amazon River.

He knew enough to know that the river was wild and dangerous even if it was beautiful, and that the forests and jungles that lined it were brutal if one went too far from civilization. Malaria and yellow fever were the first threat, thanks to the plentiful mosquitos, and the venomous frogs and snakes were as big a risk as alligators and jaguars. That was why Adam had been firm in his insistence that they stick to paved or obviously well-used roads, and not stop anywhere that wasn’t by a town.

He did not want Keith getting lost in that. If they got separated Keith was never going to be found, or at least not found alive.

A bullet ricocheted off a tree trunk near him, making him pour on extra speed even though he was already breathing heavy. He had the advantage of lighter clothes—the THEMIS soldiers were wearing body armor and toting larger weapons—but that also made him more exposed to the rainforest’s dangers. He could only hope his heavy boots would protect him if he startled a snake into springing as he pounded through the thick greenery.

He needed to lose the people after him, and quickly. He needed to get away, then find a way to lower ground to hunt down Keith before somebody else did. He didn’t think he’d ever forgive himself if the idiot got killed out here alone in the woods, even if Takashi eventually did.

Adam ran faster. He gave up on picking the path of least resistance, vaulting himself over tall rocks and low-hanging vines, pushing himself to his limits. He started having trouble keeping air in his lungs and his muscles started to burn, but he continued to defy gravity as he moved higher and higher. He heard gunfire again but it was farther back, giving him hope that his pursuers had either been distracted by something dangerous or thought they saw him somewhere else.

He came up fast on another pile of rocks and bound up them, seeing too late what was on the other side. A narrow chasm with water rushing by about thirty feet below.

There wasn’t much he could do. He couldn’t stop before he hit it, and if he tried he was only going to end up sliding off the edge and plummeting down, probably hitting the jagged side on his way. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, his muscles trying to lock up on the inborn instinct that said he should try to avoid going over the side at all costs, then forced himself to turn the momentum of his run into a leap. He pushed off as hard as he could, feeling his foot slip on the mossy surface of the rock, knowing as soon as he was airborne that he wasn’t going to make it across. The other side was higher, and he wasn’t going to reach the top.

He desperately searched the rock wall on the other side for irregularities he could grab, something he could use to at least slow himself down even if he couldn’t stop his inevitable fall. Stop himself from bouncing off and freefalling down into the water.

He barely saw the movement on the opposite side, in his panic everything was a blur. There was a cloud of dirt and small rocks as a body skidded to a stop above him, sliding off the edge and coming to an abrupt stop. A gloved hand grabbed his wrist, and Adam hit the wall hard but thankfully didn’t go anywhere.

He scrambled to get a hold with his free hand, but could only find the smallest indentations. Still, his experience in rock climbing saved him as he was able to hold himself still and stop swinging and putting stress on the hand that held him. Once he was no longer moving, he dared to look up at his savior.

Brown skin like his, gold eyes, familiar bronze hair. It was a shot of deja vu as he found himself looking up into the face of the same man he had seen holding him as a child in the Quantum Abyss.

“Raji!”

Adam’s head swiveled to look back across the chasm just as Simon appeared, skidding to a stop and almost going over the edge. He waved his arms wildly for a moment before the dark-haired woman arrived and grabbed him, hauling him back.

“God, I hate the _fucking _jungle!” Simon snarled, looking back and forth along the ravine edge. He spotted a place where it was narrower, where the two sides were closer, darted down to leap across to their side. “Tila! Get down there and find the other one!”

The woman leaned out to look down at the rushing water, sizing up the distance and depth.

“Not that way!” Simon barked. “Use the—”

Tila stepped serenely off the edge and plummeted downward, turning to land in the water in an easy dive.

“…path,” Simon finished. “I hate fucking kids, too.”

Tila broke the surface and gave a whistling chirp, then disappeared from sight. Adam watched the water, waiting for her to reappear, but all he saw was her shadow moving frighteningly fast toward the east.

Simon reached them and flattened himself out, holding out a hand. The Nixa holding him—Raji—pulled him away from the wall and made him lose his hold as he got him moving in a bit of a swing. After a minute of trying, Adam managed to grab Simon’s hand with his free one.

The shift in position moved him nearer to a handhold, and with the help he was able to climb up over the edge. Simon let him go and sat back, and with a crunching sound Raji dug his sharp nails into the crumbling old rock and climbed up as well.

“Anything broken?” Simon asked brusquely.

“No,” Adam answered, looking down at himself and the dirt that now covered him from his run and near-fall. “I think I just—”

“Good, get up,” Simon answered, grabbing him by the back of his jacket and half-hauling him to his feet. “No time to stop.”

“I’m almost thirty!” Adam squawked, fighting the grip off his jacket and stumbling forward to move under his own power. “Don’t do that!”

“Oh?” Simon turned on him even as they started to move quickly through the woods. “Oh, you’re almost thirty? Are you? Are you really? All grown up, huh? A big boy now?”

“Don’t,” Adam warned.

“You just leapt into a rock wall, Mr. Almost Thirty!” Simon ignored the warning. “You learn that in Electricity College?”

“It was _engineering_!” Adam had to try very hard not to shriek in his rising frustration. “And in case you didn’t notice, I didn’t leap into the wall on purpose! I was under a little bit of _pressure_!”

Raji stepped forward and pushed the two of them apart, making everyone stumble to a stop. He stayed between them, both of his hands up in case one went at the other, looking between them with the tired expression of a man who often had to break up very stupid fights.

“Who the hell even are you?” Adam demanded, turning on him. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Watch it,” Simon said warningly. “That’s my brother you’re talking to and he just stopped you from breaking your neck.”

Raji gave a hand sign, his face remaining mostly tired and indifferent.

_Half-brother._

Adam looked between them, trying to wrap his head around that and still trying to catch his breath fully from the chase. They were both about the same height as he was, with similar skin tones and almost the same color hair and eyes. He could see the other familial similarities in the two, but somehow Simon looked very clearly human and Raji looked very clearly Nixa.

_Human genes trump everything else_. That was what Takashi had told him they’d found in their research.

“I remember you,” Adam admitted, looking back to Raji warily. He reached up to hold the pendant around his neck, almost afraid the other man might demand it back. “You came to my grandparents’ house at night, they lived by the river. You used to be there when I’d come down to the water.”

“Yes,” Simon answered for him, which was when Adam remembered that Raji wasn’t biologically built to speak the same way they were. “There was a Galra in the area for a while. Your mother was locked away, so Raji kept watch over you while I was hunting him down.”

“A Galra?” Adam made a face. “What was a Galra doing around here back then?”

“Looking for a ship,” Simon answered. He started walking, giving Adam’s shoulder a light shove as he passed, effectively spinning him around and making him start walking too. Raji fell in on Adam’s other side, his gaze sweeping the trees as they began to make their way along the downslope through the thick underbrush. “He’d picked up some kind of signal from it but solar flares were making it impossible to pinpoint. He found us instead, and since the ship had once belonged to Nalquod he assumed we were hiding it and wouldn’t believe that we didn’t know what he was talking about. Things got a little heated, we _might_ have trashed his ship. He was stuck here for a while until we got rid of him.”

Galra looking for a Nalquodian ship. Adam knew immediately that Simon was talking about the Blue Lion. It was probably the same signal that had brought Krolia a handful of years later, then the ones who had followed and made her feel it was necessary to leave.

Adam fell silent, trying to hurry and think at the same time. He knew Tila had been sent ahead to find Keith, and the fact that the Nixa were going to help was at least some relief. But as much as he wanted to focus on finding the other pilot, his brain was reeling.

Simon was part Nixa, probably half. Raji, the Nixa man Adam had seen in the Abyss had come during the nights to guard him against a Galra who had been stuck on Earth for at least several years. Guarding him against a Galra who would have no reason to be interested in him unless he wanted to get back at the other Nixa.

But that meant the Galra would have to be aware that Adam was part of this pod. Which meant that Adam’s father would have to have been hanging around being part of his mother’s life, not just a one-off attack as he’d begun to believe.

Of course, Janet had never told Adam that he was the product of anything nonconsensual. Completely the opposite, she had simply told him she didn’t remember her one-night-stand’s name. Adam had made that assumption from the information Curtis had provided. And Curtis’ information had unfortunately been found very wanting as of late.

There was a picture beginning to form in Adam’s head, but it was choppy and fracture because he was fighting against thinking about it too hard. He had lived his entire life a certain way, and the new information he was receiving threatened the way he saw the universe.

Simon was doing his damnedest not to look at him. Adam returned the favor and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. He latched his attention onto the convenient issue at hand, trying to get down to the bottom of the hill.

It wasn’t long before gunfire erupted, closer than Adam had expected to hear it. Simon said something and Raji signed at him, but he ignored them both and started running toward the sound. He stumbled out into an abrupt end of the trees, by an overturned bulldozer that had been so attacked by dirt and rust it was difficult to see the laser marks that it had suffered in the invasion.

Tila was nearby, clinging to an armored soldier from behind and slowly strangling him in a chokehold. The soldier was firing his gun at random in his struggle, as if he might somehow manage to hit her, forcing Adam to duck behind the bulldozer. A few stray bullets almost hit Simon and Raji as they appeared behind him, also throwing themselves behind the metal behemoth for shelter.

Farther out, Keith was holding his own against two soldiers with only his Marmora blade. There had been more; two lay face down in the dirt nearby, still and unmoving, while he pressed his offensive against their surviving teammates.

He was definitely a Galra, that was for sure, and his Victory Or Death heritage was on full display. He was obviously exhausted, worn down by the chase, the jungle, and the fight, and his clothes were stained through with blood in several places.

He stabbed one of his assailants and she went down, leaving him to turn his full attention to the other. Even farther across the field, more gunfire was erupting as other soldiers attempted to join the fray but found themselves accosted by the other Nixa as they appeared.

Keith’s opponent went down and he slammed the pommel of his blade into the side of his helmet, making sure he was out. Tila’s target finally went down with a sickening snap as she twisted his head halfway around, and the other soldiers were clearly unprepared for the pack hunting ghosts that were melting in and out of the shadows of the trees, the gunfire steadily dying down until everything grew quiet.

Adam had hauled himself up off the ground when Tila’s target had stopped firing. He started to limp across the field to join Keith, moving a little faster when the younger man sank down to his knees and folded over. He was hurt, maybe badly or maybe not, but he had to be checked to be sure.

Adam was halfway to him when the woman behind Keith stirred, pushing herself up and reaching for her dropped knife. She was close, so very close, only a few feet away. Keith was looking down, his blade was dropped in the grass beside him.

He felt a wave of absolute panic wash over him as the soldier rose, yanking off her helmet so she could better see her target. Adam yelled Keith’s name, desperate to get his attention, and forced himself to run faster.

* * * * * * * * * *

“KEITH!”

The cry rang out loudly, sudden and unexpected in the quiet after the fight. It was laced with a warning, the tone of it screaming that there was danger and that Adam didn’t just want his attention.

Keith’s head snapped up, difficult to do with the way his body ached from the blows he’d taken during the fight, to find that he’d made the grave mistake of assuming an enemy was dead when she wasn’t. Her armor was scratched, but his blade had glanced off it and she had only pretended he’d hit her.

She raised her knife to bring it down in a downward sweep that would jam it into his neck, and Keith felt his brain go blank. She was right there, his weapon wasn’t in his hand, he had no protective armor. He had the almost detached thought that this was finally the end, which didn’t bring with it the kind of fear he’d always assumed it would. More like a resigned annoyance that it was because of such a dumb mistake, in a place like this, at the hands of what he considered his own people.

He tensed, waiting for the inevitable contact of the knife. The instant the blow should have taken stretched out to a second, then two. Keith slowly opened his eyes and looked up to find her staring down at him with a look on her face akin to confusion.

Then there was a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. Her arm dropped, the knife slipping from her fingers to hit the grass, and she fell forward. Adam wrenched the blade of the polearm from her back, her pierced armor creaking as it released the shining white metal with it’s now slightly stained blue guard.

The blue bayard.

Adam looked as shocked to have summoned it as Keith was that he’d finally managed. He looked down at the dead THEMIS agent in front of him, then back up at the other Paladin. He looked such an absolute mess that he could pass for having been raised in the jungle by wildlife. Not that Keith was really much better.

“…finally,” Keith croaked as Adam dismissed the glaive, the summoned bayard returning to its inactive shape in his hand. “Did you really have to wait until the last possible second to learn that trick?”

“I…” Adam panted, pointing to him with the now-harmless bayard in a manner that might have been threatening if he didn’t look so harried. “…_will_ shoot you.”

“Fair enough.”

The Nixa came to group around them, which made Keith very nervous since he was bleeding and these things were carnivorous. But Adam seemed perfectly at ease, dropping down to kneel in front of him and start poking and prodding at his injuries.

“You’re bleeding,” Keith pointed out, nodding to where Adam’s own bandage had come loose in all the mayhem. He felt sort of disconnected, still needing a few minutes to recover.

“Both of you need to get bandaged up, and quickly,” a new voice announced as a human man came to the front of the group. “That was just the point group dropped in by air. The rest of them will be nearby, moving by land. You need to be up and on your feet if we’re going to deal with them.”

Keith looked up at the man who he immediately knew was Simon Acosta-Mendez. But the pictures Curtis had shown them, either black and white surveillance photos or ones where the older man had been wearing sunglasses and heavy coats, did not do Simon justice. Now that he was able to see the guy, in person, with nothing blocking any of his features…

“Uh…” Keith said smartly, looking from Adam to Simon and back again.

“No,” Adam answered, holding up a hand to stop him.

He did not want to talk about it, and Keith was fine with that. Everything was already so freaking weird right now, he didn’t have the energy to make it weirder.

“Will the phones still work with the satellite receiver from here?” He asked, wincing as Adam yanked up the back of his shirt to check one of his injuries. “We need to call Lance. He’s still not in the sky, we should see Red by now.”

“We have to deal with our own problem first,” Adam advised, pulling the shirt back down. “We can’t have him come here if it’s not safe, and there’s no way we can get to him right now. These cuts are all relatively shallow. Bleeding a lot, but they’re already starting to slow down. The worst you have to worry about is infection, we need to get them cleaned up.”

There was a loud whistle from across the field, and everyone looked over to where one of the Nixa was standing at the trees, waving wildly at them. She made some hand signals Keith didn’t understand.

“Cleaning yourselves up is going to have to wait,” Simon said. “And now so do bandages. Everyone get to your feet and start stripping down these bodies, we’re about to have company.”


	8. Chapter 8

Shiro stood alone in the small office usually reserved for the loading supervisor, Lotor and Allura pacing outside the door. Medical files were confidential due to privacy concerns, and although he could pull rank as Captain to study the record of a crew member under emergency circumstances he could not let anyone unauthorized access the file.

The list of vaccinations—as well as the single one that Nikolaev had missed—was present and available, but Shiro didn’t feel like he had any reason to celebrate. He couldn’t be sure that this information was true, and that made him uncomfortable with sharing it just yet.

Sasha Nikolaev was very impressive on paper. Twenty-four years old, Master’s in Chemical Engineering, extensive fighter pilot training, and a perfect textbook upbringing. A little too textbook, a little too perfect. 

Nikolaev’s undergraduate degree was listed as being from Whitman College in Washington, an expensive private school with a decent reputation. It was the kind of school you wanted your recruits to come from, and Shiro knew that firsthand from growing up in Washington.

The problem was that the dates of Nikolaev’s tenure there didn’t add up. Whitman College had closed its chemistry program down a few months after Shiro had gone to Kerberos, due to waning interest and better equipped chemistry programs at other nearby colleges. He remembered reading in his hometown paper a couple days before leaving that the upcoming semester would be its last. 

Standing next to each other—and going by Shiro’s own memory—Nikolaev was only two years younger. Going by that, the timeline he was looking at wouldn’t seem too strange. But when he added in the three years for the time dilation, Nikolaev would have been about 17 when Whitman ended its program. He hadn’t even finished high school at that point, let alone earned a Bachelor’s degree.

But Whitman College was also one of the good schools that had been destroyed during the occupation, so conveniently, verifying his records would have been impossible for anyone vetting him for a Garrison position.

So Nikolaev’s college career was decidedly fake. Famous enough to have a good reputation, but not still around to get records from. Ideal. And that called into question everything else in his personnel file.

This wasn’t something Shiro needed to be dealing with right now on top of everything else. But with so many lives hanging in the balance, he couldn’t push this to the back burner to handle later. He closed out the personnel file and let himself out of the small office, finding himself immediately accosted by Allura.

“Did you figure it out?” She asked breathlessly. “Is it definitely something you have a vaccine for on board?”

Shiro stopped her from bouncing with his hands on her shoulders, gently moving her to the side out of his way.

“I can’t say for sure,” he replied. “You two should come back up to the officer’s quarantine since you were both in contact with the storage vial. Just in case. I have to verify something.”

She read his tone and knew not to ask him questions just yet, trusting him to be fully honest with her as soon as he was able to and that he wasn’t holding anything back for no reason. They took the lift back up to the smaller medical bay in silence, following him into the clean room that functioned as the entrance.

They were all hit with a cloud of disinfectant spray before they stepped inside. The doctor in charge came to meet them.

“Here,” Shiro withdrew the bagged vial from his bag. “Test this to see if there’s anything on it that matches this virus. Then double-check Allura and Lotor again, they both came into contact with it.”

The doctor nodded and led the two of them across the room, to a small, empty exam room away from the others. Everyone watched them curiously, obviously wanting to know if they’d found anything but knowing better than to ask before information was offered. 

Shiro ignored the other pilots for the time being, making his way over to Nikolaev’s room. The younger man had his eyes open, but looked half-asleep. Shiro didn’t let that stop him.

“Everyone out,” he ordered as he stepped inside, moving aside and holding the door open for the two nurses on duty. “I need a moment.”

They obeyed immediately. It was still strange to Shiro, leading as a military authority figure again instead of as a friend. He was used to some level of argument from the Paladins, and from Allura and Coran and Romelle. Not so with soldiers, they responded to his commands without hesitation and without question.

Shiro closed the door behind them when they were gone and moved to stand at the foot of Nikolaev’s bed, crossing his arms.

“Where did you transfer here from?” he asked sharply.

Nikolaev opened his eyes a little wider, showing that he was awake, and looked up at him tiredly. 

“Ellsworth, Sir,” he replied with a scratchy voice. “South Dakota.”

“No, you didn’t. Tell me the truth.”

“I’m sorry Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the fact that your personnel record is fake, Lieutenant,” Shiro answered. “I want to know where you’re from, and how you snuck that past some of the best background checkers in the Galaxy Garrison.”

He waited to see if Nikolaev would protest again, but he didn’t. Instead he sighed, struggling to sit up straight in spite of being clearly sick. Shiro stacked his pillows up behind him as a support, and he took a moment to catch his breath.

“Lithuania,” Nikolaev admitted when he was in a better position. “I’m a member of a special intelligence unit for a peacekeeping military organization.”

“You’re part of THEMIS,” Shiro realized. He felt stupid for not guessing that immediately. What other group would have the resources to sneak a fake military file past too much scrutiny?

Nikolaev looked genuinely surprised, and Shiro had to remember that the group were very much just a fairytale to most people.

“I’ve already been dealing with some of your representatives,” Shiro told him. “I know who you all are.”

“You’ve been in contact with one of the US units?” Nikolaev asked. Was it just Shiro’s imagination, or did he sound hopeful?

“Close contact,” Shiro confirmed. “The agents we’ve been dealing with are good friends of one of the Paladins. So who sent you, and why?”

“I’m part of an Eastern European region,” Nikolaev answered. His hands were fisting nervously in the sheet that lay over his lap, and Shiro was reminded of just how young twenty-four really was. He felt some sympathy for the other soldier, he was fairly young himself and knew how it felt. “I was never Garrison, but I attended my country’s branch of the Interstellar Defense Institute.”

“Astro-aerial defense against potentially cataclysmic foreign body strikes,” Shiro recalled. “They were responsible for the nuclear destruction of the Hans-Bakely Asteroid fifty years ago, before it could hit South Africa.”

They had their place in history, to be sure, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable with them. Like the Galaxy Garrison, they were a military organization with bases in many countries, and they developed their own weaponry in secret with very little scrutiny.

“I don’t really approve of most of the things I’ve heard about them, to be honest,” Shiro admitted. “I don’t find it very wise to be detonating nuclear bombs out in space without really knowing what the fallout would be. I take it you were recruited from there by THEMIS?”

“No, you misunderstand,” Nikolaev looked up at him tiredly. “The Institute is the public face of THEMIS. Hans-Bakely was destroyed using alien technology gathered by researchers under something called Project Starlight, there was no nuclear blast. That was just the cover story.”

This was getting better and better. Nobody really knew the Ghosts actually existed, or their real name, but now he was learning they had a fully recognized identity that granted them a huge amount of legitimacy. It was no wonder they were able to get so much done, they had a huge, public military complex to funnel money, weapons, and projects through.

“You have asteroid-destroying technology, and you never deployed it against the Galra?” Shiro asked skeptically.

“Had,” Nikolaev replied. “After Hans-Bakely was destroyed, it was decided that weaponry like that was too powerful to be controlled by any one group, and that there was no way to guarantee it would remain in the right hands. It was destroyed.”

“So they tell you.”

“You can believe that’s the truth. If they still had that weaponry, you would be dead.”

“Dead?” That was even more jarring for Shiro to hear. “Why would they want me dead?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Then tell it fast.”

Nikolaev gave him an almost pleading look, silently begging to not have to answer anymore questions. If he’d wanted to, Shiro could have given him a break and then just verified his claims with Curtis later. But he didn’t want to. He crossed his arms again and gave Nikolaev an unamused look.

“I can have you removed from this medical wing and tossed into solitary in the brig instead,” he offered. “It’s a lot less comfortable and there are no doctors, but I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Nikolaev looked down at his hands. He was holding the sheet so tightly his knuckles were turning white.

“If that’s what you feel you need to do, Sir.”

These THEMIS people were something else. Shiro wanted to grab him and shake him, tell him that some invisible secret intelligence service wasn’t worth his life, whether it was on a battlefield or in the face of a disease. 

“Why are you suddenly so tight-lipped?” Shiro asked, frustrated. “You were just running off at the mouth a minute ago, what is it about this particular subject that you can’t talk about it?”

“It’s not the subject, Sir,” Nikolaev replied. “It’s how you may react. What I know might make you do something stupid if you feel like lives are at risk, and I can’t let that happen. You’re a person who always tries to do the right thing, and sometimes there just is no right thing.”

Shiro had seen a lot of devastation, but this was one of the more heartbreaking casualties of extensive war. There was always a right thing, always, but so many people on so many planets had been faced with a reality where the right thing felt so completely out of reach for so long that it didn’t even exist anymore. They began to choose the lesser of two evils, and began a gradual slide into hopelessness.

“There are thousands of people aboard this ship,” Shiro answered, trying not to sound too harsh. “Thousands more on the cruiser, and even more on the colony. Are you going to tell me that you, at twenty-four, are the smartest, wisest person here, and the only one equipped to consider what you know and decide whether there’s a right thing?”

Nikolaev looked conflicted, and that gave Shiro a little bit of hope. He seemed to genuinely want to do good, just like Curtis did, and if Curtis had been healthier he probably would have caught this kid being snuck onto the crew and they’d already know what was going on. 

“I got recruited as a fighter pilot at the Institute,” Nikolaev finally relented. “I was never supposed to do intelligence work, my job was to train to be one of the best and make sure I had a long and decorated military career. Eventually they’d tap me to run for a public office or start a well-known company, or do something that would move me into a position of recognition and trust. If you can be someone who can advise the people in power, then you can help good things get done. But then the invasion happened.

“Every one of us was tapped for active duty during the occupation and moved from our respective militaries to become THEMIS operatives. We helped form rebel groups, raid prison camps, wage guerilla warfare in less urban areas. It was a lot of front-line fighting, most of us didn’t make it,” Nikolaev admitted. “About a month after the occupation ended, I was promoted to Colonel. Less than two years in service and they put me in charge of five ground teams…they considered me a senior officer. That’s how many of us died.”

“I’m sorry.”

Nikolaev shrugged. He was just as hardened to the realities of war as everyone else on Earth, mass death was just something that happened.

“As an officer, I attended the annual conference half a year ago. It’s a teleconference with no video, nobody but the Warchief in charge is supposed to know who everyone is. But there were barely any live lines for speakers, so it wasn’t really a surprise when everyone started recounting losses.

“The Atlas came up in the conference, obviously, and the Lions. It was mostly agreed that your Coalition was a good thing, and that with you protecting from space we would be free to continue protecting from the ground.”

“Mostly?” Shiro asked, raising an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that.

“Some of the higher ups in the North America region suggested that it would be better if THEMIS had control over the Lions and the Atlas,” Nikolaev answered, looking up at him. “They suggested finding ways to replace the Paladins with pilots of our own, and relieve the Atlas of its command. There are people in the US who never forgot that the country was once a military superpower and wish they could go back to those days.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Shiro asked, point blank. “Did they put you here to take over after they got rid of me?”

“No,” Nikolaev shook his head slightly. “The opposite. After a full THEMIS vote found the majority in favor of leaving the Coalition alone, a number of the North America officers became harder and harder to get in contact with. They pulled away, and some of our allies who were nearer noticed they were recruiting non-THEMIS agents. We suspected it was so they could have people we weren’t watching do their dirty work.

“I was approached by the US Major General about two weeks after the conference. He said he was looking to replace the lead Paladin agent at the New Mexico base, and that there would be a “huge opportunity” that would come of it. I brought the offer back to my superiors, and after we discussed it a bit we decided I would accept and let myself be recruited. If he wanted this agent replaced with somebody more loyal, then maybe it was somebody we could trust and they needed to be warned. I was transferred to the New Mexico base to start learning the location I’d been tapped to take over, and started trying to figure out who the other agent was.”

“But you never did,” Shiro inferred. “Otherwise you’d know we’d already been contacted.”

“People who are planning treason are careful about who they trust,” Nikolaev agreed. “I had to prove I was worth trusting. About two months ago, after Iverson became Admiral, the Major General came to me and said there would be a shakeup on the Atlas bridge crew. He wanted me to be a candidate, he said my age and experience as a fighter pilot would help me get closer to you if he could get me on the bridge. If I could get friendly enough, I could gain your confidence and use it to keep an eye on what the Coalition was doing. I never really had to go that far, I’d already made friends with Veronica McClain and she vouched for me when I applied.”

Shiro’s eyebrow quirked up a bit further. In spite of the subject matter, he felt the corner of his mouth turn up slightly.

“He wanted you to seduce me, learn as many of the Paladins’ secrets as you could, and then probably kill me in bed one night.”

Nikolaev looked up at him, his face a complete blank. Slowly, what he’d said began to sink in, and his eyes began to grow wider. Shiro could see the exact moment his innocence was completely shattered, as it only now penetrated his brain what he was actually expected to do. 

“Oh my  _ God _ ,” he whispered.

It wasn’t every day one got to see a man experience twelve different negative emotions at once. Nikolaev was having feelings science hadn’t even given a name yet, and Shiro wasn’t certain if he should be offended that the thought of seducing him was so horrible.

“So you were put here to watch me,” Shiro decided it was best to not voice his complaint and just move the conversation along. “You haven’t done a very good job, I never even see you unless it’s on the bridge. What have you been doing all this time if not spying?”

“Working,” Nikolaev answered. “This world tour the Paladins are on was planned by the US unit with no warning to or input from the rest of us. None of us were prepared for it, none of us were able to make sure we had people on the ground who could protect you if something went wrong. When my superiors sent requests for more information they never got a reply, so we knew something was wrong. And this is where we get into territory where you’re really not going to like what I say and you’re probably going to do something stupid.”

“I really want to say you’re wrong, but if you really are as similar to me as some people think, there’s probably some merit to your worry,” Shiro replied. “But I still need to know.”

“We decided that sending you all away, making you take planes to your destination and not call the Lions until you got permission, was a diversion to get you away from the Atlas and the ships,” Nikolaev said. “Since we don’t really know who the other agents are, we had no way to cover them all and find out what they were planning, which meant we had no way to stop it. So I called in every favor I could from every asset my region had and pulled worldwide supplies out of their scheduled queues. I got the Atlas fully stocked early and gently suggested to Allura that maybe we could get here and be done with this before the wedding if we left right away.”

Shiro stared at him as that slowly sunk in. 

“You pushed the Atlas out early?” He asked in disbelief. “And left the Paladins behind on out-of-country trips, knowing they might not be able to get their Lions if your rogue agents got them? Instead of  _ telling _ us?”

“You wouldn’t have left!” Nikolaev exclaimed.

It sent him into a coughing fit, reminding Shiro of exactly how weak Nikolaev was right now. He was a soldier, a highly trained special forces one who was temporarily doing a good job of hiding that weakness, but he was a very sick man.

“I told you, there was no right thing,” Nikolaev said dully, sinking back against the pillows as he regained his breath. The dark circles under his eyes made him look even more tired than he probably was. “You would have stayed, you would have tried to fight whatever happened, and you would’ve lost. Even if you’d known and canceled the trip, there was no way I could know if anybody else on your crew had been planted. Look how easily I got in, and I was being put on the bridge. The Atlas and Sincline needed to be here, where communications would be cut off and any other THEMIS agents wouldn’t be able to receive orders. And where you could still get help from the Coalition to take back the Lions.”

Shiro ground his teeth, loathing Nikolaev’s assessment of the situation. Mostly he loathed that it was correct, that he would have canceled the trip and sent up red flags with their potential attackers. He didn’t like intrigue and sneakiness, he preferred to deal with things head on, and that wasn’t the way to handle these people.

“The bombs on your cars were planted by THEMIS,” Nikolaev added, his voice starting to crack as he began to go hoarse. “I know because I planted them, and I helped “analyze” them when they were collected. I didn’t know they were going to cause that crash, or that they were going to attack Keith and Lance, and I couldn’t  _ not _ go along with it or they would’ve known I was messing with their plans for the Atlas. The bombs were dummies, just in case, but they were never meant to be set off anyway. They were supposed to scare you into thinking Babel still existed.”

“It doesn’t?” Shiro asked sharply.

“No. Like I said, a lot of our agents died. There’s a process for picking a new Warchief to lead, but the US Major General wants to skip over that. He wants to turn everyone against Axel Russo, the Lieutenant General of one of our South American regions. He’s a longtime officer and one of the next in line. He doesn’t mess around…if he ends up in charge he’ll clean house and a lot of shady stuff will stop. They don’t want that. 

“He’s been under cover for so long that his name is synonymous with the South American underworld, threatening your lives and saying he did it was the easy way to slap the “Babel” label on him and have half the world’s authorities hunting him down for them. But there is no more Babel, they were wiped out in the occupation and survivors can’t really get a foothold anymore. Not in a world where aliens are literally our planet’s lifeline with their charity.”

Not for the first time, Shiro wished he wasn’t in charge of this ship. He wished he could grab a few people, borrow the Lorelia, and wormhole back to Earth find out what was going on there. But he couldn’t, because he had thousands of sick people and a colony to stabilize, and it was beginning to look like they might have to search out a safe place to go if there really was upheaval on Earth.

What was most distressing about the whole thing was that Nikolaev was the one who’d been entirely correct in his thinking. There was no right thing here. If Shiro had known what was going on he would have stayed, and while he might have been able to stop what was going on back at home that would have meant the Atlas wouldn’t leave until after New Year.

Almost a month for them on Earth, which meant almost two more months for this colony. Who knew how many more lives would have been lost?

“You understand that when you recover, I have to put you in the brig?” He asked. “I can’t let you continue to walk free on this ship. Not until I verify everything you’ve said.”

“I understand, Sir. I assume you’ll be listing a fake crime so you don’t have to out your friend as a THEMIS agent and that it will go on my Garrison record.”

Shiro sighed, running a hand through his hair, wondering how he’d ended up here. Whatever happened to his carefree days of speeding along in the desert and dreaming of going to Mars?

“Yes. Your file,” Shiro added. “Most of it is obviously fake. Is the medical history accurate?”

“Yes,” Nikolaev nodded slightly. “That’s the one thing we never alter, unless there’s some inconsequential thing that might identify us.”

“If I show you personnel files for the Atlas crew, can you pick out falsified information and identify other plants?”

“Probably. Part of my job as a Colonel was creating false files to put my people where I needed them.”

“Good. Get some rest…you may get worse before you get better, but you’re going to be all right.”

He headed for the door but stopped, turning back with his hand on the access console. He wondered if anything about Nikolaev was real. Was he really a chemical engineer? Did he really know half the skills in his false resume? Was he even really blond?

“Is Sasha Nikolaev your real name?”

Nikolaev had closed his eyes. He opened one tiredly.

“Yes. Colonel Saša Kazimieras Nikolaev, Lithuania Unit Two. Formerly Captain of Interstellar Institute Flight Lith-Kappa.”

Shiro nodded and let himself out of the room, motioning for the nurses to go back to what they were doing. There were three medical officers standing outside the quarantine area, restlessly waiting. Everything was ready down in the labs to begin mass producing a vaccine, they just needed to know which one it was. He went to the comm and activated it, the beep drawing their attention.

“Measles,” he announced. “It’s developed some more minor symptoms and lost its telltale rash, but it’s just as contagious and just as dangerous. Don’t get sloppy just because we know what it is.”

They nodded and took off at a run. One stopped at the nearby communication console to call ahead to the labs, then darted off after the other two.

Shiro headed for the decontamination room, for yet another cleaning and shower before he could head up to the bridge. He needed to talk to Coran, and prepare for a potential mess. Then he had to get ready to begin flushing potential enemies out of his ship.

* * * * * * * * * *

“It’s not really that great,” Curtis was saying, flipping through a magazine lazily as he lay in med lab bed. “Even on the original Broadway version. It’s literally just cats fighting with each other to see which one gets to commit sacrificial suicide that year. You used to be able to see that every Tuesday night if you went down to the old docks by the Seine, just with people instead of cats.”

With the Atlas on deployment, the Garrison base was unusually empty this Monday morning and there were plenty of rooms in supply. Kuro had commandeered one when he’d brought Curtis down to rest, and currently had him on lockdown. He sat in the chair beside the bed, head resting on his arms on the edge, and let him talk.

[ [ T W : Cancer ] ]

Curtis seemed well. Better than he had in the last two days. He’d been steadily going downhill but now he appeared to have evened out, and was in good spirits. It was almost enough to make one believe he had a chance at hanging on.

Kuro had never seen this himself, but he knew what it was. It was called an end-of-life rally, an inexplicable surge in energy and mood that came on a short time before death. Here on Earth it was so common it was referred to as  _ terminal lucidity _ , a period when dying patients seemed to stabilize before they passed away.

He didn’t say anything about it. He smiled and nodded and replied when he was supposed to. He sat in his chair and leaned against the bed, and rested a hand on Curtis’ leg while he chattered on and flipped through catalogs and magazines. Curtis was thinner now, circles under his eyes and a tired look about him, but as he smiled and talked it was almost reminiscent of how he had been when they’d first met two months ago.

Back when he had been well enough to trek across a planet in search of Adam. When he’d still been strong enough to leap from the Blue Lion to the cruiser Honerva had stolen from Lotor. When he’d still been in good enough shape to literally jump out of the Atlas and sprint across a field to a fallen mech.

That was never going to happen again. These days, heavy activity for Curtis was a brisk walk, and Kuro did not recommend he try even that much if he wanted to last for a few more hours.

[ [ / T W ] ]

Curtis became quiet as he reached the end of the magazine and closed it, letting it drop down to is lap. He rested a hand on Kuro’s hair, lightly twirling a lock around one of his fingers.

“You didn’t call my family, did you?” He asked.

“No,” Kuro answered. “You told me not to.”

Curtis nodded, satisfied. This was something else Kuro had read was far more common than he’d thought, the fact that people who knew they were dying would often send family away under the pretense of feeling better so they could pass away alone. He didn’t know why Curtis felt more comfortable passing without his family present, but they had been told he was ill and they wouldn’t be taken completely by surprise. 

“Don’t be the one to call them,” Curtis requested. “Let Admiral Iverson do it. Give them a little bit of time. And…be ready.”

“For what?” Kuro asked warily.

“I amended the will and left the house to you. They might be touchy about it since they barely know you, but it’s all legal.”

“Curt, no,” Kuro groaned, turning his head to bury his face against his arms. “I’m not with you so you can leave me stuff, I don’t want anything.”

“I know, but I want you to have a place of your own,” Curtis answered. “Something to give you a solid start. I have four other rental properties in my portfolio that my family will get, and my parents and sisters have houses of their own. They’re just going to sell it anyway, and you’re already living there. But…don’t feel like you have to live there, either. If you’re more comfortable selling it and moving, that’s fine with me too.”

“I’m not comfortable inheriting something from you at all,” Kuro said dully, lifting his head a bit. “It’s not like I earned it.”

“Look, there are billions of people in this world,” Curtis replied, lightly tuggingon Kuro’s hair. “And every one of them is different. They all feel things differently, they all grow and develop differently. For you, two months isn’t a lot. You’re not in love. I get that, and I’m okay with it. But you have to understand and be okay with the fact that I’m not you. Two months is a long time for me, and I’m in love with you. Far as I’m concerned, you earned it by being you.”

“You’re talking like one of those shitty Hallmark movies,” Kuro warned.

“Good, then I’m going to die exactly how I lived. A ridiculously overdramatic gay man who does what he wants. Make sure they bury me in that really nice black suit and blue tie, not my ugly military uniform.”

Kuro sighed and stood up, leaning over to kiss Curtis’ cheek. Before he could reply there was a loud noise from the hallway that sounded like metal and plastic spilling across the floor. They both frowned and Kuro went over to the door, opening it a crack and sticking his head out.

He quickly took in the overturned cart of medical supplies, the two doctors pinned to the floor, and the soldiers gagging and cuffing them and pulled his head back in. He quietly closed the door.

“What’s going on?” Curtis asked, still enough in posession of his faculties to remain quiet.

“I don’t know,” Kuro whispered. “There are soldiers out there cuffing people. Two that I saw, but it’s really quiet out there…there must be more, they’re probably working their way through.”

He heard the door next to theirs open and realized the soldiers were checking rooms as they moved along. He looked around wildly for somewhere to go but there wasn’t anywhere near, and all he had time to do was flatten himself against the wall as the door opened inward, hiding him behind it.

Kuro held his breath and tried to make himself as small as possible, watching the door tensely as it swung open and came closer. It stopped just short of hitting him, which would have made it bounce off and tip them off that he was here. He heard two sets of heavy footsteps come inside.

“Who the hell are you?” He heard Curtis ask. He was ignored, and there was a beep as one of the soldiers ran an identity check.

“That’s Commander Duchesne,” the man grunted. “Atlas crew. He’s on the termination list.”

“We don’t need him for the shut down codes for those spy satellites?” The other asked.

“Who’s we?” Curtis asked, and Kuro heard him shifting to get up off the bed. “What are you trying to do with the atmospheric shields?”

“Nope, we already got Iverson,” the first soldier answered, still ignoring Curtis. “Waste him and let’s go.”

The faint whine of a gun preparing to fire made Kuro move without thinking. He shoved the door, slamming it into the nearest soldier hard enough to send him into the other and break the bottom hinges. They both scrambled to turn on him, but he ducked to the side as they both fired and hit the wall behind him.

That just made Kuro angry. He’d been doing a pretty decent job of staying calm lately, and keeping this growing urge to explode in check, but he’d been in the middle of a traumatizing event even before these two had arrived. He was fuming, grabbing the muzzle of the gun that had been fired at him and yanking it back.

It was hot and it burned, but he hadn’t been built to back off at a little bit of pain. He hit the soldier with the butt of his own gun and stepped over him when he went down, turning the weapon sideways to form a hook and catching the second soldier by the neck. The noise brought other soldiers running through the med bay and one opened fire, grazing Kuro’s arm and just barely missing Curtis.

Kuro finally snapped. He was tired of always being wary and always being on his toes, always waiting for something to go wrong and someone to come after him. He’d been wound tightly for months, all he wanted was to be left alone but the universe just couldn’t see fit to let him  _ rest _ .

When the noise finally died down and his vision started to clear from the black that had clouded it over, his heart was pounding and he was breathing heavily. He was out in the hallway, with dents and holes in the drywall and blood conspicuously spattered in places on the walls and floor. Bodies lay around him, twisted at impossible angles thanks to shattered and broken bones.

But they were all still alive, he could feel it. Even in a rage, Kuro was so intrinsically against taking a life he held back more than they deserved. Some of the blood was also his, he realized that when he wiped at his face to find his nose and mouth bleeding, and he could feel the sting of cuts on his arms, legs, and back. 

A sound made him tense and whirl around, but the only person there was Curtis. He had made his way to the doorway and was now staring at the carnage in disbelief. Kuro looked back down at the soldiers littering the ground at his feet and felt a wave of guilt. He had always said he was more than what Honerva had made him to be, but he’d certainly proven that false. One weak moment, and he became no better than the rest of her mindless soldiers.

“Are you all right?” Curtis asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”

The added “Jesus Christ” that he whispered now that he’d stepped out of the room and got a better view was not comforting.

“They’re not dead,” Kuro fell immediately into apology mode. “And none of them will die from their injuries.”

“I don’t care about their injuries!” Curtis exclaimed. “There’s eight of them here, did you break anything of _ yours _ while you were fighting?”

Kuro flexed his hands, then his arms, then lifted first one leg and the other. He tested everything, but aside from obvious cuts and scrapes and what would undoubtedly soon be bruises everything was functioning.

“No, I’m all right.”

“Good,” Curtis put an arm around him and turned him away, as if trying to block him from continuing to see the damage he’d done. It was laughable, the way he steered Kuro down the hall and away from everything as if he were the innocent victim and not the one who’d just mauled eight people. “Come on, I need to call Gail.”

They went further into the back of the medical bay, toward where the loading elevator went down to the morgue. Curtis paused at one of the computer consoles there and connected to the communications room.

“Gail?” He paged. “Raina? Sarah?”

“Curtis!” Raina answered first. “We’re here! Where are you?”

“In the medical bay,” he replied. Kuro stepped away from him, moving out to where he could watch down the hall and listen for new arrivals. “Some soldiers just came in here and took away the medical staff, they tried to kill me.”

“They’re all over,” Gail confirmed. “A little more than a third of the current Garrison staff, looks like. They’ve been going through the place and taking everyone by surprise.”

“The students…?”

“Evacuated,” Raina answered. “They moved them out to the landing field, probably to keep them together so they couldn’t accidentally tip anyone off. They’re shielded from any stray gunfire by the old fighter plane hangar.”

“So the kids at least aren’t targets,” Curtis said with relief. “You guys need to get out of there and get to the control station, apparently they have Iverson and they plan to do something to the atmospheric shield.”

“We can’t,” Sarah replied. “We’ve locked down, there are soldiers crawling all over this floor. So far they seem to be assuming nobody’s in here and it’s just a confidential area, but we can’t walk out of here.”

“Great,” Curtis muttered.

Kuro leaned back to look at the screen, not feeling very good about any of this.

“You’re all safe for now though, right?” He asked. “I can get Curt out of here and to safety, then come back for you and the kids.”

“Right, the kids,” Gail said uneasily. “About that…”

“Uh oh,” Curtis groaned. “What did they do?”

“Adam and Keith made contact, Lance left to go pick them up,” Raina replied. “He got caught up in what was going on outside, but they thought he was one of the cadets so he’s safe. Pidge and Hunk are in here with us.”

“So Lance is out here somewhere with no backup,” Kuro breathed, leaning back against the wall.

This was a nightmare. As much as he wished otherwise, Kuro knew he was the one who was best equipped to move safely through this base. He was made to go up against a larger number of enemies and win. But now there were four different allies to worry about, all at four different places.

Lance was on his own, which honestly didn’t bother him nearly as much as the others. He had taken down the entire Atlas from inside, he could take down this base from inside if he was given time. But on the Atlas, Shiro had been stopping everyone from killing him outright while here the enemies would be shooting to kill.

Gail, Raina, Sarah, Pidge, and Hunk would only last so long in the comm room. For now they thought nobody was there, but once somebody with authorization tried and failed to open that door it would be over. It was a secure room, there was no way in or out except that door.

Curtis absolutely could not go up against anybody on this base. He wasn’t in the shape for it, and his time was already running out. Every moment here was another moment he was in danger.

Keith and Adam were on their own on another continent, and from the sound of it they were expecting backup that wasn’t going to come. 

Kuro wished Takashi was here. Kuro was impulsive and could be borderline fearless when it came to just himself, but this was a very different situation. There were other lives on the line, including those of any friendly soldiers and staff who had been taken prisoner.

He knew what he had to do. He hated it, and wished someone else was here to tell him otherwise, but there was only one best way forward. Kuro reached over Curtis’ shoulder and muted the comm line.

“It’s the best thing for everyone,” Curtis said once they couldn’t be heard, already knowing what he was going to say. But then, they said people who loved you were the ones who could read you best.

“I know.”

“It will be hard getting in, but it will be easier getting out. It will probably be just you.”

“I know. I just hate it,” Kuro murmured. “But like you said, you’ll die the way you lived.”

“Kicking the bad guy’s ass and being a hero,” Curtis nodded.

“No. Being a pain in my ass,” Kuro corrected him, leaning over to unmute the comm. “You guys keep in contact with Lance. Curt and I are going to head for the control room and stop whatever’s going on…hold out as long as you can, but make it your number one priority to get out of there and get to safety.”

“Will do,” Gail answered. “Please be careful.”

“Not an option, sorry,” Kuro answered. 

He cut the communication before she could say anything else, dropping the hall into silence. He stood there for a moment, leaning against the chair Curtis was sitting in, until sounds echoing from across the med lab said others were coming and would soon discover what happened here.

“Okay,” he said hollowly, pulling Curtis to his feet and hitting the button for the morgue lift. “Let’s go.”

“Are you sure you’re up to going against a small army?” Curtis asked as the lift opened. “I know you don’t like hurting people, Ryou. I may not have much left, but I can make it to the control room myself.”

“It’s not a question of whether I’m up to going against a small army,” Kuro answered, stepping into the lift after him. The doors slid closed, leaving them looking at their reflections in the silvery interior as he pushed the button to go down. He blinked, letting his vision sharpen into a mode that would let him see things he normally wouldn’t be able to, his gray irises replaced by inky pools of black as he let go of some of his tightly reined-in control. “It’s whether they’ll be able to go up against me.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Adam did his best to remain still as he knelt in the middle of the overgrown road. It had been beaten down by the work trucks coming through to harvest the trees but had never been paved, and since the invasion nature had done it’s best to reclaim most of it. There was some grass as padding, but he could feel a few pebbles digging into him.

Keith knelt next to him, his hands behind his back just like Adam’s were. He was more cut up and bruised though, and having a harder time with his balance at the moment, and he leaned against Adam’s side to keep himself upright. Adam kept his knees planted slightly farther apart than usual to give him some extra support, his heart starting to pound as three Jeeps approached and slowed to a stop.

He knew the armored man holding the gun to his head was Simon, and that Raji held the one against Keith. He knew they were as safe as they could be under the circumstances, with the four other armored soldiers standing around them being impersonated by Nixa. But he still didn’t like it.

He wasn’t bound, but used both hands to grip the blue bayard behind his back, forcing himself to keep them there and not do anything stupid.

More THEMIS soldiers got out of the back two Jeeps, but it was two familiar faces that stepped out of the first.

“Carlos?” Adam had not been prepared for that one. “What the fuck?”

Simon pressed the gun tip to his head lightly, wordlessly warning him to keep it together. Which was difficult since both Adam and Keith were still mostly in the dark, having not had enough time for any explanations before they’d been forced into this.

Next to Carlos, Janet’s pain-in-the-ass assistant stepped out. They were both wearing armor like the soldiers, but no helmets or face masks.

“Calm down,” Carlos advised. “We’re going to get this worked out.”

“Oh, just shoot the smaller one and throw the bastard in the back,” Amanda complained. “Toss the body out on the road where they can find it and blame Russo and let’s go.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Carlos said calmly. “We can put them both in a cell.”

“No, we can’t,” Amanda said hotly. “Russo is hunting us down, we need to give the police a reason to slow him down for us. Not to mention, look how long these two have avoided us together, I’m not letting them team up and escape. We  _ need _ him.”

“I know,” Carlos sighed.

“Do you? Because you act like you don’t!” Amanda hissed. She turned away slightly and dropped her voice, not seeming to care if Adam heard her, but trying to keep the argument from the other soldiers. “Do I need to remind you what happens if we lose him for good? Do you not remember what happened when she thought he was dead?”

“I warned you not to try to use Sophia instead,” Carlos murmured. “I told you Simon was ready this time and would intervene, you don’t listen.”

“Fine,” Amanda snapped. “Put them both in the back. Simon’s probably hunting for this one too, let’s get him out of here before he finds us. I’m not going to lose the only thing keeping us funded.”

“Put them both in the back,” Carlos requested of Simon and Raji, far more politely than Amanda.

Adam wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but he was pretty quick. Amanda mentioned funding, which more than likely meant Janet’s money since Simon had never seemed interested in investing in them. He himself was undoubtedly the one they meant Janet thought was dead, since pretty much everyone in the world had thought that. So they’d tried to use Sophia for whatever they’d been doing before he’d “died.”

It wasn’t a stretch to say that hadn’t worked well. By their own admission Simon had gotten involved, and on the phone before he’d left Simon had hinted that his sister and nephew were okay.

Adam waited to see what was going to happen next, but Simon and Raji didn’t move.

“Today!” Amanda said irritably, snapping her fingers. When they still didn’t respond she turned away from the Jeep and stalked over. “Are you deaf or something?”

Carlos turned his attention to them, and away from the Jeeps. Simon did something out of the corner of Adam’s eye—probably signing, and then the trees along the path started to move.

It was like something out of a horror movie. The Nixa hiding in the greenery moved quickly and silently, and the unprepared soldiers fell quickly. They were dead before they hit the ground, making no sound as the grass softened the impact. 

Simon and Raji removed the helmets they wore, eliciting strangled noises from both Carlos and Amanda. They turned to their backup, stopping short when they found themselves face-to-face with their own dead soldiers and a pod of very dangerous-looking aliens. Carlos, more reserved than Amanda, put his hands up in resignation.

Amanda took a little longer. She drew her gun, and took a moment to come to terms with the fact that there were far more weapons aimed at her than she could effectively disarm. She finally made a sound of disgust and tossed her gun in the grass, raising her own hands. Raji pulled Carlos’ weapon from his holster and disposed of it.

_ Okay _ , Tila said from her perch on top of the last Jeep.  _ Now what do we do with them _ ?

The signs she used were a mix of the ones Adam remembered them using as a child and Libras, the Earth sign language used in urban Brazil. They had adapted to use the language of this place, which meant their stays here were not short. Adam had learned Libras before he’d begun learning ASL and was actually more fluent in the latter. 

_ Tie them up and dump them in a field for the weirdo with the ugly shirts to find, _ Raji suggested.

“Well whatever you’re going to do, can you decide fast?” Adam requested. “Keith and I both really need to clean up and get some fresh bandages before we end up with an infection.”

“Cuff them, gag them, make sure they’re completely disarmed, and put them in one of the Jeeps,” Simon ordered. “The ship’s not far.”

“Ship?” Adam looked up at him, finally getting to his feet and helping Keith up. “What ship?”

“The pod’s ship,” Simon replied, getting Keith’s other arm to steady him and help them both over to the Jeep. “I wasn’t about to try to track you through the Amazon on foot. I’m crazy, not stupid.”

“I’m fine,” Keith insisted once they reached the vehicle, able to walk without limping now that he was off his knees and had a chance to stretch his legs. “How do you have an unregistered ship on this planet? We track everyone that comes and goes these days, how could we not know you were here?”

“You’re not tracking this ship,” Simon replied, climbing into the driver’s seat once everyone was secure. “It’s a ten-thousand-year-old runner. Your sensors could probably pick it up if you wanted to, but it’s so far off from modern ships none of your scanners are dialed into it.”

“Where did you get a ten-thousand-year-old ship?” Adam asked, making a face. “And how does it even still run?”

_ We were using a Galra skiff we stole a few decades ago _ , Raji replied, dropping into the shotgun seat.  _ We have five planets in our migration list and Earth was next on the cycle. But when we arrived we found the Galra occupying it. We didn’t have the right codes and they came after us, so we were forced to use their jump points and leave the system. None of our territories were safe while the Galra were there so we couldn’t return, and we stayed in space for a while _ .

Adam was watching Raji sign, acutely aware that Tila, who was sitting next to him in the back seat, was leaning in close and staring at him as if he were a bug. He jumped when she poked him in the cheek curiously.

“What?” He snapped, pulling back and rubbing his face.

_ You’re still so weird and squishy _ , she said unapologetically.  _ I thought maybe you’d get more normal when you got bigger, like Uncle Simon. _

Uncle Simon. That probably made her Raji’s kid, and if he was guessing right then the pale man who looked so much like her was likely her brother.

“Look who’s calling who weird, Nosferatu. You could open tin cans with those teeth.”

_ At least I have teeth _ , she returned.  _ You’d probably break your jaw on a tuna roll. _

“Test me,” Adam dared.

“Don’t make me come back there and separate you two,” Simon threatened, shooting them both a look in the rear view mirror. 

“I have no idea what’s going on,” Keith murmured. He was sitting on Adam’s other side, watching hands flail everywhere and having no clue what was being said. Adam sighed and sat back in the seat, crossing his arms.

“They had a Galra ship, but they were caught during the occupation and had to go to another system,” he told Keith. “Usually they migrate from planet to planet, but all of the places on their list were too dangerous with Galra nearby, so they had to hang out in space for a bit.”

_ Until we picked up a distress signal two months ago, _ Raji continued now that Adam and Tila were no longer going at each other.  _ When we followed it, we arrived at a blue planet at the same time as your great Earth ship. We stayed cloaked and watched it crash. _

“They picked up Lance’s phony distress signal when he attacked the Atlas,” Adam told Keith, now much more interested. “They were at Arus when you went down.”

_ We landed and waited to see if it was necessary to render aid, but there were many of you and only a few of us, _ Tila said.  _ So we remained hidden and we listened, and we learned that the Galra had been overthrown on Earth. _

_ We stayed on the blue planet for a few weeks after you were gone _ , Raji added.  _ Swimming in the warmer waters and hunting the larger fish. While we were there we found a ship, sunk just off the abyssal shelf beneath a cliff lined with strange bridges. _

“A cliff with…bridges,” Adam repeated, grimacing slightly. “On Arus. I don’t know what that means.”

“Bridges?” Keith asked. “That sounds like the cliff where the Castle of Lions was settled. What about it?”

“Was there water at the base of the cliff?”

“Yeah. It was at the edge of the ocean,” Keith confirmed.

“They found a ship in the deep water there.”

“I was still on Earth when they found it, but I’ve been messing around on it in the months since they came back,” Simon said, turning off the beaten path and sending the Jeep crashing into the trees. The others in their little caravan followed suit behind them. “It’s Nalquodian, so it’s built to be berthed in water. That probably saved it from exposure over the centuries.”

“And it still works?” Adam asked skeptically. “This I gotta see.”

They drove on for another few minutes, and miraculously didn’t hit anything or come to any point where the vehicles couldn’t get through. That meant there was a very old path that had been grown over, giving the illusion of not being here. Adam’s thought was proven correct when they came out of the trees and turned onto a paved road, this one going past a small town. They didn’t stop, continuing on for about five miles.

Simon pulled off the road and into the decrepit remains of what had once been a relatively new gated community. Half of the houses were destroyed, the other half beaten and broken by the elements. There was a lot of green, as the absence of people gave the jungle free reign to try and reclaim its lost ground. The Jeeps slowed down to work their way around fallen utility poles and collapsed houses, coming to a stop at the end of a cul-de-sac.

Settled between two houses, well-hidden from the road by the distance, loomed the dark blue hull of a moderately sized ship that was only slightly smaller than the Lorelia. It’s lighting was bright, shimmering like sun on the surface of water, not dark and foreboding like most Galra ships. It looked like something that should be swimming in the depths of the ocean, sleek and fast.

Adam stared up at the ship as he slowly climbed out of the Jeep. He felt Keith lose his balance as he clambered out behind him and caught him, finding him staring up at it as well. There was something about it that nagged him.

“You feeling a weird hit of deja vu too?” Adam asked.

“Yeah,” Keith said, righting himself and smoothing his wrinkled shirt. “Feels like I’ve seen it before. It’s the same feeling I got from the carvings in the cliffs back in New Mexico.”

At least Keith was feeling it too, that meant Adam wasn’t completely crazy. They approached the ship, slowing down when a door on the side opened. It lowered, the inside forming steps, and a woman came barreling down them.

“Adam!”

Sophia threw herself at him and he barely managed to catch her, stumbling backwards. She had always been a tall woman, just about six feet, but she was heavier than he remembered her being. And not fat either, she’d gained some muscle over the last two years. He could feel her practically crushing him with her hug.

“Soph,” he choked out. “Ribs.”

As cold and distant as he’d always acted to protect himself, Adam had always had a soft spot for his little sister. It was impossible not to, she had inserted herself into his life from the day she’d tracked him down, and refused to be shaken off. 

When she loosened her hold he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back so he could get a good look at her. The last time he’d seen Sophia her hair had been long, but now it was cut short. Her face was still pretty, despite the scars that ran across it from numerous run-ins with Galra weapons, and there was a burn scar on her neck that went down under her shirt and probably covered a good portion of her shoulder and upper arm. 

She saw him looking at the scars and gave him a bright smile, as annoyingly cheerful as always.

“If you think I look bad, you should see the other guys. Oh no! What did they  _ do _ ?”

Her smile faded as she got a good look at his eyes. She leaned in for a closer look and he let her, raising his eyebrows.

“Really?” He asked. “You look like you’ve been through a meat grinder, and you’re going to worry about me? Nobody did it, it happened in a jet crash. It’s fine, these are medical grade implants.”

“But can you see?” She asked, leaning in closer.

“Not with your big head blocking my line of sight, no.”

She moved back and gave him a look, punching him hard in the shoulder. It kind of hurt but he only winced a little, pretending it was nothing.

“Nice,” he said airily, resting a hand on her head. “Someday you’ll grow up and be able to throw a real punch, but that was okay for a shrimp. I’m glad you’re okay. Where’s Gabriel?”

“Safe,” Sophia answered, scrunching up her nose at the taunt. “I didn’t want to bring him out here in case something happened.”

She stopped talking as the man Adam assumed was Tila’s sister walked past, steering Amanda ahead of him. Before Adam could react, Sophia was on her, throwing punches as she got Amanda down on the ground.

It took Adam and Simon both to pull her off, and she was snarling at the other woman so quickly in Portuguese even Adam only caught every other word.

It wasn’t pretty.

“Not yet,” Simon pushed Sophia back a few yards, keeping himself between her and Amanda as the other Nixa hauled the woman to her feet and shoved her forward to the ship. “Take a deep breath. You wait here with me until they’re locked up. Everyone else, on board.”

Carlos was marched past them, and the few other Nixa who weren’t yet on the ship climbed the stairs. Adam let out a huff and slowly followed suit, feeling almost dizzy as he stepped inside.

Sleek, curves, just like the outside. Shiny surfaces, light pulsing from no particular source, like looking up at the sunlit sky from beneath the waves. Adam felt like he knew this ship, like he’d personally been here before.

Part of it, he knew, had to be the memory of the Blue Lion. He had felt her presence since he’d finally summoned his bayard, settled calmly in the back of his mind in a way she hadn’t been before. What he felt was a strange mix of feelings that came from both inside and outside as he slowly walked through the main hallway.

Gently lit in a comfortably blue tint, darker toward the bottom of the walls and lighter toward the top. A softly humming engine that he could feel rather than hear as it started up. He felt like he’d walked this hallway before.

_ The Lions _ , a woman’s voice echoed softly in distant memory.  _ They wiped us all out, now they’ll be looking for the Blue Lion. _

“We don’t know what they’re looking for,” Adam whispered, running a hand along the smooth surface of the wall. 

_ We know exactly what they’re looking for. You need to take her and hide.  _

Adam walked past a small common area, where five teenaged Nixa stopped their discussion to look up at him curiously. The oldest of the pod’s children probably, allowed to come along because they knew how to keep out of trouble. He went past that, slowing to a stop in front of the only door he’d come across so far that was closed. Keith paused with him, eyeing the door with a look of confusion he knew must be echoed in his own face.

“Some kind of personal compartment,” Simon said as he caught up to them. “Don’t bother with it, it’s locked. Been that way since the ship was hidden in the ocean, probably. The characters are probably Nalquodian, nobody can read them anymore.”

He went past them, continuing on to the ship’s small bridge. Adam looked at the keypad on the door, then over to Keith. Keith looked up at him.

“18314-19-21,” Keith said out loud the numbers that Adam was thinking. It was a birthdate ten thousand years gone.

Adam took a breath and punched in the numbers. The door slid open and the lights came on inside, revealing a small private travel compartment just as Simon assumed. It was a bit dusty from particles having settled after the air filtration was off for so long, but other than that was in perfect condition.

Keith stepped inside and moved to the far side, sliding open an inner flap over a window in a style similar to that of an airplane. It gave them a view through thick glass to the outside. Adam looked around, turning to get a look at the door, noting the fabric on the upholstered inside was torn away and scratched as if somebody had been trying to escape.

“Get this ship to Altea,” Adam murmured, running his fingers over a tear in the fabric. “Don’t release her until you safely arrive.”

“What?” Keith asked, looking back at him.

“Nothing,” Adam answered, shaking his head.

He started to go farther in, but stopped. Frowning, he walked backwards out of the compartment, paused, then strolled back in at a more natural clip. He took three steps in and raised his right hand, like a well-worn habit he’d only just now remembered he had. He hit a panel above one of the seats, activating the release and making it pop open.

Keith stepped up with a foot on the seats of either side of the little room, using them as a stool to look inside the storage compartment. 

“Holy crap, look at this!”

Uniforms. Not just uniforms, armor. Not quite as sturdy as what they were now supposed to wear, but Adam recognized the colors as Keith pulled them down one at a time. They were folded up in clear wrapping, just the armor without any helmets. Stowed with them was a woman’s crown, a silvery filigree decorated with delicate pearl-like stones and a single large, blue gem. 

Adam took the crown when it was handed to him, getting a closer look. It was well-made and sturdy, and none of the materials were recognizable.

“I think this is your ship,” Keith hissed, dropping his voice. “I think this is the ship Merla and her guard escaped from Nalquod on.”

“It’s was a grave,” Adam answered as Keith stepped down. He carefully set the crown down and picked up the blue armor, holding it up. “Or maybe a memorial is a better way to describe it. Look how carefully these are folded and stowed…kind of like our military does with flags for a fallen soldier’s family.”

“This was the original Paladin armor,” Keith mused, taking it. “I _ remember _ this armor. Not clearly, but it’s a lot like the way I remembered the meaning of the carvings in the New Mexico caves. I think that’s why I know this ship, it was Blaytz’s. Zarkon would have been on here.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Adam replied. “Lance remembers back even before being Alfor because the quintessence field knocked his braincells loose. Neither of us was in there.”

“Maybe it’s just a case of remembering something when we come across it,” Keith suggested. “All five of us are back together and the Lions are getting more active, it could have something to do with that.”

“Shh, somebody’s coming,” Adam warned, hearing footsteps.

They grabbed the armor and put it back in the storage compartment with the crown, closing it up. Quickly stepping back into the hallway, they closed the door and let it seal itself, pretending to just be loitering as Raji approached.

_ Tall, blond, and stupid is looking for you _ , Raji said on his way past, not even bothering to stop.  _ He’s going to talk to the prisoners. _

“What’d he say?” Keith asked.

“Simon’s going to talk to Carlos,” Adam answered, already walking. “Come on, I need to hear what’s going on.”

They were halfway to the cockpit when Simon appeared, making them turn around and head back the way they’d come. Back, through the ocean-like ship to a small area in the back. It was sealed with a solid metal door, which opened to show a room split in half with a small cell on either side. The cells had bars, but were also behind a thick glass. Adam knocked on one, and realized it was to muffle sound.

“Fun,” he commented.

“We need a couple of these,” Keith agreed.

Adam closed the door behind them, leaving him, Simon, and Keith alone in the small hallway between the two cells. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the door, knowing he was going to have to accept details he wasn’t quite ready to think about yet. There just wasn’t time for him to ease into it, he had to rip it off like a band-aid.

“You’re my father,” he said bluntly, almost accusatory, looking to the older Nixa. Simon, for his part, did not look terribly upset. He was a soldier, always had been, and he wasn’t going to get flustered over one conversation.

“Yes,” he answered, without beating around the bush.

“You never told me,” Adam said. “You knew what I was going through, and you just let it happen.”

“I did, and I did,” Simon agreed.

“My life was  _ hell _ . You were always around, you knew, and you never did anything.”

“Correct.”

Adam groaned and rubbed his face with both hands. As a kid he had often dreamed about running away and finding his biological father, fantasized about being welcomed with open arms to live with a caring family. It was a stupid fantasy, he knew, but even knowing the truth could never be rosy and wonderful hadn’t prepared him for this converation.

“Can you say something besides just givigng me an affirmative?” He snapped. “Argue, defend yourself, do something!”

“I told you when you were a child that I knew what you were going through,” Simon reminded him. “I told you I was aware that it was bad, and that I knew I was at fault for doing nothing. I’m not going to defend myself, I know what I did. You have every right to be angry, I’m not going to try to dissuade you from that or pretend I’m less guilty than I am.”

Adam let out a huff and looked over at Keith, who just shrugged. He looked a thorough mix of confused, uncomfortable, and mildly stunned, like he wasn’t sure he was supposed to be here for this but wasn’t about to leave because he was hearing some intriguing shit.

“Will you at least tell me why?” Adam asked, looking back to Simon. “I think I at least deserve that much.”

Simon nodded. He leaned back against the glass between them and Amanda’s cell, ignoring that she was glaring at them even though she couldn’t hear a word that was being said.

“I met your mother in the military. We weren’t together at first, she was only eighteen when she enlisted and I’m…a lot older.”

“Nixa age slower than humans?” Keith asked. Simon nodded.

“I’m a little over ninety. Our pod has a handful of planets in its migration cycle, it makes a full cycle every few decades. On each planet, during each stay, they mix with the locals to keep the pod from dying out. Sometime’s it’s just single encounters with local males, sometimes they’ll barter something exotic and expensive as payment to reproduce with a local female. It’s very similar to humans hiring a surrogate and then adopting the baby. Generally the children travel with the pod when they migrate, but humans are very stubborn about their physical traits.”

He pulled down the high collar of the shirt he wore, showing the gill slits on his neck that were almost invisible when they were closed, and opened his mouth to show the very sharp canines.

“This is all I have to show what I am. I can breathe under water under very specific circumstances and I have a strong bite, but that’s it. And even these didn’t occur until I was older. I’m not equipped to survive in the waters where the pods migrate to, so I stayed here and grew up with my human father. I eventually enlisted in the military and was recruited into special forces, which was where I met Jacinta. She was brilliant at computer programming, at hacking back doors into closed systems, altering records, transferring money.

“We did a lot of good work. Good enough that we were eventually spotted by THEMIS, and became assets for them. Eventually we got in very deep…we were a team of four, two of us went under cover and pretended to ditch the military and go into black market weapon smuggling. Jacinta and I pretended to quit the military, and founded companies that would let us filter them what they needed to do their job. We created an algorithm that made us a lot of money in the stock market before it was outlawed.

“Carlos was our THEMIS contact,” Simon said bitterly, looking through the class at the man who was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, not looking at them. “Because of the nature of what we were doing, anything that looked suspicious was dangerous. Jacinta and Carlos pretended to marry, publicly it gave them a reason to always be near each other and constantly speak. That was how information went from our team to THEMIS.

“Then one night the Galra showed up looking for that Lion. We told him to go fuck himself…or rather, I personally told him to go fuck himself. He didn’t like that, and he decided to show me as much. He stalked us, saw me with Jacinta, saw how close we were. He waited for a night when I was supposed to meet up with her but had a problem with my motorcycle, and when I was late and she was alone he attacked her. It was the first time she realized aliens existed, and after what happened to her…she wasn’t exactly calm when she escaped and made it to the police station.”

“So she didn’t know you were an alien then?” Adam asked. “When did she find out?”

“Shortly after,” Simon answered. “When I finally made it in to see her, I found out she’d called me to meet her to tell me she was pregnant. That was when I knew I had to tell her the truth, so she’d know what you were. But by then she couldn’t take back what she’d said, she’d already caught the eye of assholes from a group called Babel, and Carlos had gone back to THEMIS with her claims. Jacinta tried to go back on what she’d said but it was too late. A Babel representative told her they could “take care of” the baby, get rid of it so nobody would be the wiser, and help her get justice. Carlos’ wife Amanda swooped in, promising her that she would keep you safe from them.”

Adam didn’t want it to make sense, but it did. His life had changed very dramatically and suddenly around the time Janet had hired her assistant. She must have been hiding him herself before that, that would explain the boarding schools. But even then, she had visited regularly and taken him to church every week, and had generally been much kinder and more gentle.

“Their idea of keeping me safe kind of sucked,” Adam told him.

“Their idea of keeping you safe was to take you out of the country and put you where Jacinta couldn’t reach,” Simon answered. “Then tell her that if she didn’t do what they wanted, they would publicly expel you for some arranged trouble and make sure Babel found out you were no longer under THEMIS protection. You wanted to know why nobody stepped in? That was why. You had a target on you at all times, and if we pushed too far somebody was going to pull the trigger.”

Adam fell silent, looking down at the floor. He knew without a doubt he was not going to be able to properly process any of it until he sat down with his therapist and went over it. He wasn’t equipped to deal with this alone, he needed help. He needed his doctor, and he needed Takashi. 

He was angry, but the frustrating part was that he didn’t know where to aim that anger to make it productive. He was just generally mad at everything, because there was no specific villain. There was no immediate bad guy he could take this out on, except the two agents in these cells.

Adam pushed away from the door and hit the control console, opening the glass in front of Carlos’ sell. He stood in front of the bars, looking down at the man sitting on the floor.

“How were you tracking me?” He asked. “We got away from you twice, but you still always found us. How?”

“Why should I tell you that?” Carlos asked. He sounded resigned, almost tired. Not combatative, just sick of the constant stress and saying what he was supposed to say.

“Because I’ve just been told that Amanda over there is your wife,” Adam answered. “And a man doesn’t end up in a mess like this unless he really loves the person creating it. Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll take her apart piece by piece while you watch. And I promise you, I’m not the good guy here. That’s not an empty threat.”

Carlos looked up at him, then his gaze flicked over to Keith.

“I am the good guy here,” Keith answered his look. “But if he starts pulling off her limbs, I’m going to walk out that door and go be the good guy sitting on another part of the ship.”

Carlos let out a breath through his nose and sat up a little, shaking his head.

“There’s a chip,” he answered. “We put one in you when you were first enrolled in the Garrison, it’s how we kept track of you. When you were taken off world and we lost the signal we assumed you and it were destroyed in the invasion. We knew you two were going to be sent down here to die so the US zone could claim your Lions, and we chipped you again so we could get to you first and make you disappear to make sure we didn’t lose our leverage.”

“I have a fucking  _ chip _ ?” Adam asked, appalled. “Like, in my  _ body _ ?”

“In the back of your neck,” Carlos replied.

“How did it even get put there?” Adam demanded. At no time had he been around anybody he didn’t trust in any way that would allow a chip to be implanted when he’d gotten home. He’d been in that cryo-pod for months with Kuro monitoring it and Takashi watching it, there was no way.

“We have a contact up there,” Carlos answered. “He knew you were being taken out of quarantine, so he arranged to have you moved to a different hospital instead of the Garrison medical bay. During the transfer, before you woke up, he had the chip implanted for us.”

Adam felt a cool sensation rippling through his chest. It was the closest to pure rage he’d ever been in a long time, and he had to try very hard to tamp it down. He was practically grinding his teeth as he spoke, gripping the bars that were the only thing saving Carlos from him right now.

“Name,” he bit out, already suspecting now that he knew what Carlos would say. “Who’s your contact?”

“A guy who worked for the Garrison,” Carlos answered, looking up at him. “The US Major General has been recruiting people outside of THEMIS to do his dirty work so he wouldn’t be tracked as easily. They promised this one they’d wipe out his history of sexual assault complaints and get rid of the girls threatening to press charges, plus give him his own command if he did a good job.”

Carlos got up, careful to stab back away from the bars where Adam couldn’t reach him as he rose to be on more even footing with the other men in the room.

“Some General who got the rank through nepotism instead of skill,” Carlos said. “A guy named Jason Laurentia.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the comments, you guys are still enjoying this and I'm still managing to make it make some kind of sense. I'm glad! Bond is at just shy of 850,000 words now as a series, and beginning to move into the final stages before the end. A huge thanks to all of you who are still reading and take the time to let me know, as much as I honestly do love writing this story you all really are the encouragement I need to keep going. Thank you!

Lance wasn’t known for his motorcycle skills, and his ignorance of the rules regarding them was on full display. He wasn’t very fond of the riding experience on Keith’s beloved bike, but as he cut across a shopping center parking lot in a very illegal manner he had to admit that it was at least faster than a car.

Keith had eschewed parking the bike with all the other vehicles in the Lion hangar, choosing instead to leave it in the student parking lot. It was far easier to check for tampering than the cars, and being in such a prominent place meant it would be difficult for anybody to try anything on it without being seen.

Military coup notwithstanding, anyway. Lance had been able to steal it thanks to attentions being elsewhere.

After handcuffing Montgomery to the radiator in an empty office, of course. He couldn’t have her wandering around.

Red would have been faster, but there was simply no way to call a one-hundred-ton ship without it being seen, and they were trying to keep the current Paladin presence unnoticed. Whoever was behind what was happening at the Garrison needed to not know what hit them.

But there were currently only three Paladins and three trusted THEMIS agents against God only knew how many recruited soldiers. They needed an army of their own, and there was only one way Lance could think of to get it.

He gave up on the road entirely, jumping a curb and tearing across unfenced grass until he reached the back of the row of buildings he was looking for. Crossing himself and praying for the protection of every Saint in heaven to keep him safe when Keith found out, he stopped the motorcycle and dumped it there without bothering to find a safe place to put it.

It was a quick sprint around the buildings and onto the paved street, down the row of apartment buildings to the door of the most familiar one.

“Come on,” Lance whispered, hitting the doorbell to Keith’s apartment. “Do not fail me now.”

Silence remained for about two heartbeats, then was broken by a familiar ‘pop’ and Lance found himself bowled over by a hundred pounds of muscle and fur that began licking his face excitedly.

“Kosmo!” He exclaimed, hugging the wolf in return. “Am I glad to see you!”

It had been a toss up on whether the wolf would even be in the area. Unlike normal dogs, neither Kosmo nor Hoshi seemed to really need people to take care of them. Leaving them to their own devices for a while wasn’t uncommon, and Lance hadn’t even been sure Kosmo would be home.

As weird as that sounded.

“Yes, yes, I love you too,” Lance sputtered, fighting himself out from under the giant canine. He hoped desperately that the wolf really was as intelligent as Kuro and Keith swore they were. “Listen…there’s some trouble at the base. Somebody’s raiding the place and locking up the good guys somewhere, and we need a jail break. But first I have to get Hunk and Pidge out, they’re trapped right now, and Curtis and Kuro are MIA.”

Kosmo tilted his head to one side, looking no smarter than the average golden retriever. But Lance had seen him in action.

“Come on, I know it’s your day off,” Lance tried. “But Keith’s in trouble down in South America, and I can’t go get him until we figure this—wait!”

Kosmo was suddenly gone, vanished with another loud pop. Lance groaned, picking his way over to the window to try and peek inside to see where he’d gone. The wolf was his last idea—pretty much his only idea, to be honest—and he really needed cooperation.

He was balancing precariously on the edge of the front step, hanging over to try and search the apartment interior, when two more pops sounded behind him, startling him.

As he recovered he turned to find that Kosmo had returned. But now he wasn’t alone, Hoshi was him, and Lance supposed he should have realized he would have gone to find her after hearing that Kuro was missing.

“Awesome!” Lance exclaimed, jogging back the way he’d come. “You two head to the base, I’ll grab Keith’s motorcycle and meet you back there as soon as I can!”

He was just about at the corner when Hoshi bound past him, disappearing from sight as she teleported away. Lance didn’t get much farther, though, before Kosmo caught up to him and grabbed his arm in his teeth.

It didn’t hurt, but Lance let out an undignified shriek anyway as the ground suddenly dropped out from under him and he felt like he was submerged in cold water.

The world reappeared, just long enough for him to realize they were in the middle of an intersection. A huge truck was bearing down on them, blaring its horn in warning, and he screamed again as they blinked back out.

Three more times he was dragged in and out of reality as the wolves made several hops to reach their destination. Finally he was released to fall down on the dead winter grass outside the fence that surrounded the Garrison base, panting for breath and trying to regain his senses.

“I’m going to go premature gray,” Lance whispered to himself, running his hands along his arms and legs to make sure he hadn’t somehow accidentally left any bits of himself behind somewhere. “Oh, God, I was not ready for that.”

Hoshi whined softly, impatient, and he pulled himself together and got back to his feet. He took a quick moment to survey the base from here by the street.

They were being careful to avoid doing anything suspicious that could be seen from out here. The front gates were locked and it looked like nobody was at the guard station, making the whole base look like it had been closed down for the day.

“Okay,” Lance breathed, glancing around to make sure everything was quiet. No cars going by on this road, and nobody out wandering the parking lots of the industrial park across the field. “First things first, we need to get into the communications room. Do you remember where that is? It’s on the second floor, that building over there. Those windows? It’s behind those rooms.”

He put an arm around Kosmo’s neck this time to avoid being dragged about, bracing himself against the teleport. After another brief flash of cold he heard voices crying out in surprise, and cracked open an eye to find himself exactly where he needed to be.

“Lance!” Hunk was the first one to identify the sudden arrivals in their midst. “Kosmo! Hoshi! Perfect timing!”

“They just realized the room is locked against their codes a few minutes ago,” Pidge called from across the room. She was closing up the last of the laptops, helping Raina and Sarah gather everything.

“Do they know you’re in here?” Lance asked, darting over to help.

“I don’t think so,” Gail answered. She and Hunk were already holding some laptops and tablets. “They suspect somebody’s in here, but I don’t think they know exactly who.”

“Good, then once they get in and find it empty they won’t know right away it was us.” Lance took what was handed to him and motioned wildly for the others to gather around the two wolves. “Come on, quick! We need to go somewhere safe!”

“Allura’s lab!” Hunk suggested. “It should be in their travel range, and nobody’s got the codes for that but her! Not even Iverson.”

“Good call. Everybody hold on tight, it’s a wild ride!”

Lance squeezed his own eyes shut in preparation for the quick trip, and heard multiple squeals and squeaks from Sarah, Raina and Gail as they blinked out of the communications room. A moment later they were in Allura’s lab, and he dumped the gear in his arms onto an empty lab table.

“We got in touch with Curtis and Kuro a little bit after you got stuck outside,” Pidge said breathlessly, dumping her own weight and scratching Hoshi behind the ear when she came over. “They were in the medical bay when some soldiers came through, but the escaped. Curtis said the bad guys have Iverson and are heading to the control room to do something to the atmospheric shields.”

“Do we have any idea who the “bad guys” actually are yet?” Lance asked. “It’d be nice to know who we’re up against.”

“The THEMIS Warchief’s files had the US Major General listed as being under investigation,” Hunk answered. “I don’t know about the rest of THEMIS, but since a full military base overthrow is happening here I’m going to guess it’s at least a big chunk of that guy’s handpicked agents and hired thugs.”

“Not to nitpick, but we literally did the same thing to the last Admiral,” Pidge pointed out. “So we can’t really be self-righteous about it happening again.”

“Yes we can,” Lance waved her off, grabbing a notepad and pen from Allura’s desk. “It’s called hipnoscopy, it’s the new self care.”

“Hypocrisy,” Raina corrected.

“Gesundheit,” Lance replied. “Okay, here’s the deal. We have to get to the control center and help Kuro and Curtis save Admiral Iverson and stop whatever’s going on with the atmospheric shield. The control center is across the landing field, which means it’s out in the open, and once we do get there we’ll probably have to fight our way through soldiers.”

He roughly sketched out the Garrison ground, glancing up at Pidge.

“Did you guys see on the cameras where they’re putting everyone?”

“The Quarantine building,” Pidge replied. “But we do know a little about it’s security, since Adam, you, and James were there for a while.”

“The security doesn’t matter,” Lance answered. “Gail, Raina, Sarah…you guys are going to take Kosmo and Hoshi and pop our soldiers out of holding. They can only take a handful of people each at a time, so take both of them.”

“Shouldn’t you guys take them to get to the control center?” Gail asked.

“It wouldn’t do us any good,” Lance pointed out. “If we show up there fast with no backup, we’re useless. Fact is, we have more soldiers than they do, otherwise they wouldn’t have to catch everyone by surprise and take them a few at a time, and we’re going to need them to get those students completely off the property and take this base back. Hunk, Pidge and I will go in, we’ve got plenty of experience breaking into Galra bases to help us here.”

“We have to go by foot,” Hunk frowned. “It’d make sense to call at least one Lion to clear the way, but those kids are still close.”

“I know,” Lance agreed. “They’re out of harm’s way from any gunfire, but I’m not comfortable bringing the Lions into this as long as any students or anyone on our side might get hurt in accidental collateral damage. It’s okay though, we’re Paladins. We’re leaders of the Voltron Coalition, we helped bring down half the Galra empire. We got this.”

He hoped he sounded more confident he felt as he reached over to pet Hoshi.

“We’ll find your man,” he promised. “But while we do that, we need you to help the ladies here gather us some backup. Will you?”

Hoshi whined, clearly not happy about that, but padded over to the three THEMIS agents and Kosmo with her tail low. The group disappeared a moment later, heading off to do their part in the Quarantine building.

“I’m starting to understand Dog,” Lance complained. “This is getting weird even for me.”

“I promise, that isn’t even peak weird for you,” Hunk assured him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “So how are we going to do this?”

“First, helmets on,” Lance instructed, grabbing his. “If we get separated, we’ll need the comm link. Second, leave the uniforms on over the armor, they don’t have to know how protected we are. Third…demotions.”

“Demotions?” Pidge raised an eyebrow.

“Demotions,” Lance repeated. “We need to ditch the cadet gear and grab some of the camo suits the rank and file soldiers wear. We’re under the Atlas hangar, there’s a locker room up at the top of the stairs. Just start busting open lockers until we find what we need.”

“Or we could just check the supply closet up there,” Hunk said helpfully. “The base takes deliveries at the loading docks in the back, there’s bound to be an incoming crate of uniforms up there somewhere.”

“I mean…that takes all the fun out of using an emergency as an excuse to wreck the place, but I guess that would work,” Lance allowed.

He put made sure his helmet was correctly in place and stopped at the door, turning around to face them and becoming serious.

“Be careful, guys. This time we’re going up against people who we trusted, and who we have to assume know all of our weaknesses. We’ve gotten out of a lot of near death experiences before, but not this time. If it comes down to running or dying, you guys better run.”

“That shield is the only thing protecting Earth right now,” Pidge frowned. “This planet can’t survive another attack, it just can’t. We have to do whatever we need to do to get to that control center.”

“Maybe we should call back Hoshi or Kosmo,” Hunk suggested as they left the lab and crept down the quiet, empty hall. “That would get us there way faster.”

“No,” Lance snapped. He sighed, realizing he sounded like an asshole. “Look…we’re armored. Kosmo and Hoshi aren’t, and they’re bigger targets…and everyone here knows they can teleport. They’ll be the first ones they open fire on, and they may not get away in time. Remember when Kosmo was hurt helping us escape all those strikers in that cave?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Hunk relented. “I know I definitely wouldn’t want to be the one to look Keith or Kuro in the eye and tell them something happened to one of them.”

They reached the end of the hallway and quietly moved up the stairs, finding only a few people milling around in the mostly empty Atlas hangar. With the ship and it’s crew off world there wasn’t really anything that needed doing in here, and a couple soldiers were just taking weapons from the storage.

They tiptoed along the wall, ducking into the locker room and making for the large storage closet Hunk had mentioned. Once inside, they dug around until they found boxes with the uniforms that had been delivered to the base but not yet assigned to soldiers. By the time they’d each found one that fit, the floor was littered with opened plastic wrapping and discarded fatigues.

Hunk found some camo face paint, and they did their best to cover the glaring white of their helmets. It wouldn’t pass muster if they were up too close, but from a distance they would blend. They worked quickly, and as they finished up Pidge peeked out into the hangar.

“It’s empty,” she whispered. “Coast is clear.”

“Okay,” Lance took a deep breath and adjusted his helmet. “We don’t have time to sneak. Everybody here should have something they’re busy with, so as long as we don’t give them too much of a reason to look at us twice, hopefully they won’t.”

“If we believe we belong, everyone else will too?” Hunk asked. “That sounds like a terrifyingly dangerous tactic, but I don’t have anything else so I guess we’ll go with it.”

“Any chance we get to take down any of the enemy, we do it,” Lance told them as they stepped out of the locker room and strolled across the empty hangar. “We find them walking in twos or threes and we can get them before they get us, take the chance. Let’s cull their numbers as we go.”

“Exactly what they did to our guys,” Pidge agreed. She charged up her bayard, the electricity making a soft whine as it ran across its surface. “Are we supposed to try not to hurt them, or can we make them really sorry?”

Lance slowed down and turned to her, putting a hand on one hip.

“When this is over, we need to have a talk about what puberty is doing to your attitude, young lady,” he chastised. “But also…feel free to make them really sorry.”

They made it across the hangar and down one hallway, stiffening and shifting their gait to a more professional march as two armed soldiers turned the corner. Pidge pulled herself up to her full height, trying to make herself look fully grown, but to their relief the soldiers must have had a specific assigned duty and didn’t give them a second glance. Lance turned down the hall that would take them to the airfield.

Down the hall, through a set of double doors, across a lobby. They passed several groups of soldiers, holding their breath each time, and each time being smiled upon by whatever gods made the enemy too busy to pay any attention to them. They finally reached the doors to the airfield, just two more soldiers between them and the exit. But rather than being preoccupied, these two were standing to the side talking and not particularly busy.

Lance’s brain screamed for him to come to a halt, he had to force his legs to keep moving at the same pace to not look suspicious. They kept their eyes straight ahead, moving with purpose, pretending they had somewhere to be. They made it past the loitering guards and Lance counted barely three yards between them and turning the corner when one of the guards’ comms beeped.

“_We have a problem in the quarantine area_,” a female voice exclaimed, out of breath. “_Prisoners are getting loose_.”

“Hey, you hear that?” One of the guards called to them, making Lance swear under his breath. “They need help over in the…shit!”

The two soldiers had looked a little too closely and realized they weren’t on the same team. Lance called his bayard as they started raising their guns and Pidge launched her cable at them. It wrapped around both their legs and tightened, pulling them together and sending an electric shock through them both that made them both tremble and make odd noises.

Lance hurried over, kicking their weapons away and training his gun on them just in case. He grabbed the comm from the first soldier’s hip as the shocks died down, turning up the volume while Hunk bound the two men.

“_Cancel that_,” another woman’s voice said lazily. “_Couple of teachers weren’t tied tight enough_.”

“_You take care of it?_” Another man asked. “_Still need backup?_”

“_Nah, we got it. Quarantine is secure_.”

Lance turned the volume back down, clipping the comm to his belt.

“That was Sarah,” Hunk noted. “No more maydays, they must’ve taken out the soldiers in the quarantine area.”

“And that’s our cue to hurry up,” Lance said. “Backup’s on the way and this base is about to turn into a battleground, subtlety’s out the window.”

He summoned his shield and started running, and Hunk and Pidge quickly fell in with him. They slammed into the exit doors and threw them open, catching a group of about ten soldiers by surprise.

“Hunk, go!” Lance exclaimed. “Pidge, with me!”

He slammed the base of his shield into the ground and braced it and Pidge joined him, the two of them protecting Hunk as he summoned his own bayard and swept the area with his gun. The soldiers sent a few shots back their way but scattered, taking cover behind the Jeeps that were there.

Lance picked at them, firing shots when he was in the clear, but for the most part Hunk kept the whole area covered as they slowly inched forward. When they were close enough, Pidge pulled a disc from her belt and threw it under one of the Jeeps. All three Paladins ducked down behind shields as it exploded, only protected from the searing heat by their full armor. Lance could see parts of the stolen uniform he wore melting away on his arm where the shield didn’t quite cover.

The remaining soldiers fell back behind the remaining Jeeps, now being careful to cover the area with their own gunfire and not let the Paladins get any closer.

Lance searched for a solution, but they were effectively pinned down. The flaming vehicle to one side blocked their vision with smoke and fire, and if they got too close even their Paladin armor would suffer. The remaining Jeeps were positioned in a way that made it impossible to get a clear shot at any of their opponents, but the soldiers were able to get shots off on them.

“What now?” Hunk asked, adding his own shield to the small wall as bullets bounced off the surface. “We can’t go forward. Should we fall back and find another way?”

“Can’t!” Pidge called, grimacing as she held fast against the barrage of gunfire. “Once we’re back in that hallway we’re trapped until backup fights its way here!”

“Or until they take us down,” Lance grunted. “Gotta find a way forward somehow!”

The sound of metal slamming against brick was loud enough to be heard even over the shooting, and for a brief instant Lance’s heart stopped at the thought that they were about to be shot from behind. He started to pivot, difficult with the way he was crouched down, but didn’t get far before something hit his back hard.

Kuro leapfrogged over him, catapulting himself over their shields instead of going around, effectively stopping the soldiers from seeing him coming. He landed in a forward roll that brought him to the base of the nearest Jeep, where he braced himself and grabbed the bottom. There was a bit of resistance but then the vehicle flipped over on its side, sending soldiers scurrying away.

Lance shouted a warning as one of the men didn’t run, instead climbing up the Jeep to lean over and aim his gun at Kuro. Kuro flattened himself against the bottom of the vehicle and reached up, grabbing the soldier’s helmet and yanking it off. He flipped it around and slammed him in the head with the hard side twice, then grabbed him by the front of his uniform and threw his now-unconscious body to the side.

“That was_ awesome_!” Pidge exclaimed. “I didn’t think you could flip a _truck_!”

“Yeah, well, I broke three nails, so I’d rather not make a habit out of it!” Kuro yelled back, crouching down and moving quickly along the side of the Jeep to grab another enterprising soldier who was trying to aim around the bottom.

He grabbed the gun and slammed it back into the man’s face until he stopped moving, and tossed the weapon aside. Then, carefully, he pulled himself up to peek over the top.

“More coming!” He called. “Probably heard the guns! Looks like about twenty!”

“Problem!” Hunk shouted, grabbing his shield and spinning around to brace it in the other direction. “More coming from around the building! Either they’ve been tipped off by now that something’s going down or they just heard the shooting!”

Lance looked around wildly. There were at least fifteen soldiers coming towards them from behind, and still probably four or five left shooting at them from behind the Jeeps. Then the other twenty on the way.

There was a disturbingly large number of soldiers, and nowhere near enough shield surface. Kuro was too far away for them to shield even if they did have enough coverage, and unarmored.

The bullets started flying before he could think of anything to do. The only reaction any of them could have was to hunker down, making themselves as small as possible while Kuro flattened himself against the back of the overturned Jeep and tried to keep anyone from reaching him.

Even in the chaos, Lance felt his arm vibrate as his Lion sent out a warning through his armor’s display, broadcasting the notification it was programmed to give.

“_Atmospheric shield requires scan to deactivate_.”

It sounded from all three Paladin armors at the same time, the voice seeming to echo due to the repeat. Lance looked over and met his friends’ gazes, and knew he must look just as horrified as they did.

“They’re in the system!” Pidge exclaimed. “If they get the right print scan, our only defense goes down!”

“What are they trying to do, get this whole planet murdered?” Hunk asked. “What kind of idiot would take down the shield?”

“The kind who doesn’t believe it’s a defense,” Lance said grimly. “There are plenty of morons here who think it’s just some kind of Paladin trick to take control of Earth or whatever. Like we have time for that.”

He pressed in closer to Hunk and Pidge, the three of them now back-to-back against fire from all directions. It was as if their training in those first days on the Castle of Lions had been prophetic.

“Kuro!” Lance shouted. “They’re trying to take down the shield completely! You have to get over there if you can and stop them! You’re the only one not pinned down out here!”

“They’re doing what?” Kuro exclaimed. The stupidity was unfathomable even to him.

There was a flash in the sky in the distance. Even in daylight the sparks were visible as a satellite shut down, its connection to the others breaking the otherwise invisible net in a brief instant of feedback. Lance’s stomach started to sink as the first crack in Earth’s armor appeared.

“Stay together!” Kuro suddenly yelled, calling Lance’s attention away from the second flash as another satellite disarmed.

“What?”

“Stay together!” Kuro repeated. “Hold onto each other! Don’t let go!”

Lance didn’t know what the hell Kuro planned to do, but he had seen enough of the man’s spontaneous—and often dangerous—stuns to know that he should probably listen. He squeezed himself back tighter between Hunk and Pidge and let go of his shield, linking an arm with each of them and hanging on tight.

Kuro took a deep breath and pushed away from the Jeep, running toward them. Lance didn’t know what to expect because he had no idea what was going on, and he was even more confused when Kuro slid to a stop in front of them with one foot against Lance’s leg as if he were stealing a base.

The third flash came overhead, the arc of electricity being released as connections were broken. But this time, instead of dissipating harmlessly in the atmosphere, it shot downward. It danced in an unnatural spiral instead of the expected jagged arcs, gathering around the fingers of one of Kuro’s outstretched hands. Lance felt his hair stand up as electricity danced over the surface of his armor, and from the sounds Hunk and Pidge made he knew they felt the same.

The electricity dissipated over them quickly, only a fraction of a second, then moved immediately in the opposite direction as Kuro did…_something_ to call it back and slingshot it away. It hit the group of fifteen unprotected soldiers, sending most of them sprawling, but left the three Paladins unharmed as Kuro’s touch grounded them all somehow.

The shooting stopped from that direction, but the energy of the shock wasn’t enough to keep them down. Lance looked around for where he’d dropped his bayard, but Kuro was already moving again.

He was on his feet, making a pulling motion with his hand. Against everything Lance had ever learned in science and physics—which admittedly wasn’t a lot if he thought about it—the electricity was pulled back toward them.

But this time it wasn’t alone. Lance could feel the disturbance that came with it, the disruption to the natural electromagnetic fields of human bodies. The electrons that came surging back pulled quintessence with them, effectively sucking the life force out of the group of soldiers. It was visible to the naked eye as Kuro pulled it back in a wave, the dark purple of druidism instead of the bright blue of alchemy.

Three seconds. Maybe four. From the time Kuro had reached them to the moment he drained the consciousness out of fifteen human beings, Lance hadn’t even drawn a full breath. Even if he had any idea how to process what was going on, there was nothing he could have done given the speed at which Kuro moved.

Kuro stood up straight and slammed a foot down on the ground near Lance’s leg, where the three huddled Paladins were casting an early-morning shadow. Like a flash of light—only completely opposite—the patch of darkness grew quickly around them, fed by the quintessence Kuro forced down into it.

Lance didn’t see the shadows touch the soldiers shooting from the other side of the Jeeps, but he heard the screams as the gunfire stopped. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before in his life, the kind of tortured shrieking he could feel down in his bones. Just as suddenly as it began it stopped, and the whole airfield fell into a disturbing, frightening silence.

“What…the hell,” Lance croaked after a moment. His voice didn’t seem to want to work.

Kuro took a deep breath, then started to sway on his feet. A trickle of blood ran down from his nose and he stumbled a few steps before collapsing down to his hands and knees. It was so quiet Lance thought he could hear the blood drops pattering softly against the cold asphalt.

“Ryou!”

Curtis moved past them, catching Lance by surprise. He must have been hidden inside, out of sight of the shooters. He didn’t look too strong on his feet either as he reached Ryou, leaning down to put a hand on his shoulder.

“What was that?” Lance found his voice, getting shakily to his feet.

He looked back at the unconscious soldiers littering the ground then ran over to the Jeeps, moving around one to get a look at what had happened out of sight. About twenty-five men and women were there, lying or sitting, many of them spasming and shaking. They were all staring with wide eyes, looking at nothing, many of them with their mouths still open in silent screams.

“What the hell did you _do_?” Lance demanded, trying not to shriek the words and almost failing.

“Showed them what Hell looks like,” Kuro answered, finally pushing himself up to sit on his knees.

Lance got a good look at his face and leapt back to put distance between them. Kuro’s eyes were an inky black, and there were dark gray marks running down to his face similar to Honerva’s. He was breathing heavy and looked a bit weak, but Lance wasn’t taking any chances. He turned to Curtis, who looked a little uneasy over Kuro’s appearance but otherwise not surprised.

“He’s a druid?” Lance demanded, his voice starting to get high pitched now as he got more upset. “He’s a goddamn _druid_? And you knew about it?”

“Not all druids are the bad guys,” Curtis answered.

“Bull!” Lance spat.

“If I mistrusted everyone who had power like our enemies did, I’d have to kill every alchemist!” Curtis shot back, giving him an angry look. “Don’t conveniently forget that the biggest threat to this universe is someone just like _you_ when you’re drawing lines, Lance!”

Lance clenched his teeth, biting back a reply. He had at least seen good alchemists out there, but never a good druid. Still, now wasn’t the time to argue the point, and his anger was more over not being warned than anything. As horrifying as what Kuro had done was, he had still saved their asses.

Another flash above reminded them that their defenses were lowering. Lance shot one last glare at Kuro and Curtis and summoned his bayard.

“We don’t have time for this,” he muttered taking off across the airfield toward the control center. “Pidge, left! Hunk, right!”

They caught up to him quickly. They reached the control center a moment later as a group, following the same tactic they’d used to explode onto the airfield as Lance slammed bodily into the doors and threw them open. They were familiar with the interior of this building though and knew where people would be standing.

Pidge went right and Hunk went left, as instructed, both ducking down behind the consoles that lined the room. Lance went center, not slowing down, hitting the ground and sliding between two surprised soldiers as he reached the other side of the room to roll behind the console on the far side. He drew his gun and took aim, making sure he had eye contact with Hunk and Pidge first and that everyone knew where allies in the room were.

Two Paladins on one side, one on the other. There was a pause of about three seconds while everyone digested the positions of the enemy, and then the shooting started.

There were five soldiers in here. Two had been standing near where Lance landed, the third was toward the back of the room. Two more were toward the front, and were holding up a very battered looking Admiral Iverson who didn’t appear able to stand on his own. At the main control console, undoubtedly having used Iverson’s handprint by force to access the system, was General Laurentia.

The three who were free started shooting first, followed by the two who dropped Iverson and drawn their guns. It was a free-for-all in the small room as everyone took cover behind something and started shooting at everyone else.

Up on the viewscreen, the satellite network map was slowly going red as the connections points continued to shut down, one after another. Lance made the mistake of getting distracted by it, and one of the soldiers managed to come up behind him and press her gun to the back of his neck.

“Your armor’s not going to stop a bullet from going through the back of your skull here,” she warned. “Put your hands up.”

Lance cursed and put his bayard down, raising his hands. The soldier quickly ripped his helmet off and tossed it aside, pointing her gun directly at his head.

“You two! Hold your fire or his brains paint the floor!”

Hunk hesitated, and that was all the time the soldier near him needed to scramble past him and press a gun to the back of Pidge’s neck. Both other Paladins unhappily laid down their arms and raised their hands in surrender, and their assailants removed their helmets as well.

“Cuff them and put them in the middle of the room,” Laurentia ordered irritably. “Where they can’t hide behind anything.”

Lance was dragged to the middle of the control center and shoved to the floor, his hands pulled behind his back. Pidge and Hunk were pulled over to join him. None of the soldiers in the room showed any sense of urgency, and a glance at his friends don’t Lance they were thinking the same thing he was: this was too far across the airfield, they didn’t know their backup was being whittled away.

But while they waited, there was nothing they could do. The three Paladins watched in horror as the last of the satellites turned off, and Earth’s shield was removed.

“Bring him back over here,” Laurentia ordered. The two soldiers picked Iverson back up and dragged him over to the console.

Laurentia opened the communications program, and at first Lance didn’t know what he was doing. It wasn’t until the screen flashed with the words “Authorization Required for Classified Signal” and Pidge let out a squealed “No!” that he realized what was going on.

“Wait,” Lance called, pulling at his bindings. “Don’t do that! Stop, _don’t do that_!”

“I don’t need your input,” Laurentia replied, pressing Iverson’s hand to the scanner. “The Paladins have had secret control of the Atlas and Zaiforge cannon long enough. Earth will be taking over, thank you.”

It was obvious then that Laurentia had no idea how dangerous what he was doing was. Even after the destruction wreaked by the Galra, this Earth-bound idiot had no concept of how dangerous this war still was. He was assuming that because Sendak and his fleets were destroyed, the Galra threat had been neutralized. The danger Honerva posed meant nothing to him.

Lance started to fight viciously to escape his bonds. Next to him, Hunk and Pidge did the same out of desperation to stop what was happening.

“This is General Jason Laurentia of the New Mexico Garrison base,” Laurentia announced into the comm. “Hailing the IGF Atlas. Respond immediately.”

It was too late. The Atlas’ emergency signal, only to be used in the most dire of circumstances, was activated. The Altean technology created a connection immediately, and the only line that could reach the ship on its clandestine mission went live.

In a never-ending universe, filled with unfathomable, empty miles, Laurentia had just stuck a glaring beacon on the Atlas for all enemies who were out there monitoring Coalition chatter for intel.

“Garrison, this is the IGF Atlas,” Veronica appeared on the screen, obviously distraught by the call. “What’s the emergency?”

“Change of ownership,” Laurentia responded. “Where’s Shirogane?”

“Captain Shirogane is currently overseeing the evacuation of colonists,” Veronica narrowed her eyes, and Lance recognized that glimmer of anger in his sister’s expression. “What is this about?”

“The US branch of the Interstellar Defense Institute is taking over operation of the Lions, the Zaiforge cannon, and the Atlas, effective immediately,” Laurentia replied. “Your pilots are under arrest and your satellites have been deactivated, and we’ll be assigning new pilots to the Lions shortly. Stop what you’re doing immediately and return with both the warship and the Sincline.”

Veronica stared at him for a moment, then looked away from the screen in the direction of what was probably Coran’s seat.

“Is…is this line broadcasting live?” She asked. There was an affirmative that was definitely Coran, and when Veronica looked back at Laurentia, Lance thought she might be ready to spit fire. “You _fucking_ _idiot_.”

“I’d watch your language if I were you, Lieutenant,” Laurentia said coldly. “You’re talking to someone several ranks abo—”

“You just announced to the entire goddamn universe that you’re unprotected!” Veronica snarled. “Pointed out to everyone who’s looking exactly where we are! Get that shield back online and the Paladins to their Lions, because you’re going to need everything Earth has!”

“I’m not going to listen to—”

A loud pop interrupted Laurentia this time, as Kosmo appeared next to Lance. He latched onto one of the guards and then disappeared, and Hoshi blinked in for the next. One by one they took out all five, then the doors burst open and Garrison soldiers poured in.

“What happened?” Gail asked breathlessly, skidding to a stop by them and fumbling with Lance’s bindings. Raina and Sarah ran over to release Hunk and Pidge.

“Dumbass activated the Atlas’ emergency connection!” Lance answered. “Then told the entire Galra empire that our defenses are down and the Sincline’s not here!”

“We have to get everything back online!” Pidge squeaked.

“You’re not taking control of this back,” Laurentia said angrily. “Now that your spy satellites are down, the US military can take back control from your brats. Your “coalition” of aliens doesn’t get to dictate how the United States uses its resources.”

Two soldiers moved to subdue him, but Laurentia drew his pistol. He fired half of his clip into the console before they managed to grab him, wrenching his weapon away and dragging him out of the way. Hunk and Pidge darted over in a panic, jumping as sparks flew from the ruined console.

There was one particularly big explosion of sparks, and then the whole room went dark.

“Oh no,” Hunk groaned. “He hit the temporary power line.”

“Temporary power line?” One of the soldiers asked. “I’m going to be very sorry I asked this, but why isn’t it on the main grid with extra backup failsafes?”

“The new power grid was just installed on this part of the base last week,” Pidge frowned, flipping on the light at her wrist to try and dig around in the wires. “This room was scheduled to be switched over to it the day after tomorrow. I think that’s part of why he picked now for this coup, he knew he’d be able to cut power to the controls.”

“We need to get back to Kuro’s laptop, then,” Gail said, moving back out into daylight with everyone else as two soldiers carried Iverson out of the dark room. “That’s the only other active portal for accessing the satellite controls until we get power back to this room.”

“How long do we have to get everything back online?” Raina asked.

“We have to assume Honerva’s been actively listening at all times,” Hunk answered. “Calculating the time it takes to alert on-call pilots, open a wormhole, and launch an offensive…”

There was another bright flash overhead, this one an eerie purple color. Familiar streaks of light, three this time instead of only one, shot down from the atmosphere and landed in the desert with a force that drove exploding earth up into the sky with perfect visibility even from where they stood.

“Five minutes ago,” Lance whispered, staring in shock along with everyone else. “We needed to have everything back online five minutes ago.”

* * * * * * * * * *

The ship traveled low, just high enough to be above the jungle trees, unnoticed by anyone below thanks to cloaking technology that seemed very similar to what Pidge had engineered for the Green Lion. Adam was impressed with the speed and the inertia dampening system that made it feel like the ship wasn’t moving at all.

He was debating whether to reward Carlos’ honesty with a rain of his wife’s body parts anyway when Raji opened the door to the holding cells.

_We’re over Rio de Janeiro_, he told Simon, completely ignoring the two prisoners. _You want us to land outside the city limits, or just drop you somewhere nearby?_

“Screw it, just land in the city,” Simon decided. “You know the estate, right? There’s space on the grounds, near the tree line. Doesn’t matter if anyone sees you now, there’s nothing they can do about it.”

_Fine. I’m going to let the kids have the guards, though._

“I don’t care, they’re her guards, not mine,” Simon answered, gesturing to Amanda with a thumb. “But send Taki and Pira, not the kids.”

_Whatever._

Raji was clearly a man who had seen way too much shit in his life and desperately needed a nice, decade-long nap. He appeared to be the older of the two brothers, and Adam was beginning to suspect that Simon was the source of 90% of the shit Raji had seen. The general vibe was that the two were fairly close, so were probably in regular contact even during migration periods when Raji was off-world.

Simon closed the glass over Carlos’ cell and motioned for Adam and Keith to leave the containment room, sealing the door behind them as they stepped back out into the main hallway of the ship.

“You, come with me,” Simon said, pointing to Adam before turning to Keith. “You, the infirmary is up toward the front. I’ll send Mali to bandage you up.”

“Um, I think I’d rather come with you,” Keith answered. “No offense, but…there are a lot of sharp teeth on this ship and I’m bleeding.”

“I promise you, you’re too disgusting to eat even if rumors were true,” Simon replied. “Which they’re not. Nixa eat seafood and large non-intelligent game. They’re about as likely to try and take a bite out of you as you would be to bite a random person on the street.”

“I—” Adam started, but Simon put a hand over his mouth without looking at him.

“Adam has nothing to contribute to my statement,” he said, still looking at Keith. “He’s an extreme outlier on outlandish behavior and shouldn’t be used to judge the rest of us. Go to the infirmary.”

Keith was reluctant, but also very obviously in need of having his cuts cleaned and wrapped. Adam motioned for him to go ahead, then pointed up toward the private compartment where they’d found the armor. While they were busy, he could make himself useful and gather the things from the storage compartments.

Adam followed Simon off the ship, where Raji and Sophia joined the two of them. The group of four walked across a very familiar lawn, though the view was very different.

The Lobo estate was situated on top of a hill, with a grand view of Rio de Janeiro. It had once been very beautiful, but like most of the world there was still mass destruction caused by the occupation. Adam had been here a few times, at Sophia’s begging request, but had visited only in the capacity of a friend of the family rather than a member.

It was very strange, looking back on those times with the information he knew now. Knowing Janet took every excuse she could to deny him access because she was not allowed to be in contact with him, that ever trip he did make here had been a concession by her keepers to keep Sophia from getting suspicious. He had always known Enzo’s cold reception of him was because he was getting money that Enzo was not, but the reactions of everyone else now made far more sense.

Why he was never able to talk to Janet alone, because Amanda was always in the room. Why Carlos, while kind, always seemed to be watching him to make sure he didn’t slip up. Adam was an adult, and a very skilled soldier with a lot of military contacts, if he’d ever realized what was going on he would have fought back violently and he would have won.

He had expected that the estate would be one of the first things rebuilt, since Janet had the money to buy building materials without waiting for government groups to supply it, but that wasn’t the case. Half the large house was in ruins with no attempts at restoration made. From here Adam could see that reconstruction was in process out in the city, but the hill was untouched.

Most of the once-manicured grounds were grown-over, being reclaimed by the surrounding hillside. The part of the yard that was still being taken care of was not the same trim, flat lawn, but instead was a pleasant mish-mash of planters, flower beds, and a decently-tended vegetable garden. They passed a chicken coop, the birds poking around outside of it in a wire fence enclosure. It was far more reminiscent of his grandparents’ small home on the river than the fancy house once used to entertain business contacts.

As they approached the house, they reached a point where some of the dirt was kicked up as if there had been a struggle. Drag marks indicated that at least two grown men had been hauled away into the trees.

“Taki and Pira cleared the way,” Simon said when he noticed Adam’s slight confusion. “There’s usually a few hired guards on the grounds…easy to keep a paid protection detail when you’re using somebody else’s money.”

“How many people do they have on their payroll?” Adam asked as they passed the drag marks. “There have been at least thirty people shooting at me and Keith since we got here.”

“The US Major General is the agent in charge of all THEMIS activity in the United States,” Simon replied. “If he’s not answering to anybody, he can technically recruit as many agents as he wants. And with Carlos and Amanda using Jacinta’s money to bankroll him, he can send as many of those down here as they need him to.”

“So this still doesn’t end until somebody puts a bullet in this guy’s skull,” Adam came to the inevitable conclusion.

Simon reached the now-unguarded back door and punched in the entry code, pulling it open. He glanced back at Adam as he stepped inside.

“Which is exactly why the way needs to be paved for Axel to become Warchief, whether he wants to or not. At this point, he’s the only person left in THEMIS with the spine to do exactly that and unite everyone left under him.”

They stepped into a huge kitchen that, to Adam, felt almost surreal. Once streamlined and sterile and run by hired staff, half the space was filled with indoor plants and potted herbs. There were bowls and utensils scattered around a floured countertop over by a window where a cat sat on the sill licking its paw. A plastic-covered bowl of what looked like bread dough sat beside him to rise in the warmth.

Tila and another woman arrived behind them, hauling the bound and gagged Carlos and Amanda, as they left the kitchen and passed through the formal dining room. The large table and chairs that had once been in here were gone, instead there were piles of non-perishable foods that looked like somebody had been interrupted while putting them into rations boxes for distribution. Annoyed voices rose up ahead of them, across the hall in the old drawing room.

“I don’t make the rules,” a man said irritably. “I’m just doing my damn job! Is it just physically impossible for you to sit still and shut up for a few hours?”

“Plants aren’t going to water themselves!” Adam recognized Janet’s angry voice. “Eggs need to be collected, Marie and her volunteers need to be allowed to come get those food boxes to give out…life here can’t just stop because the fucking babysitters aren’t home!”

“I don’t know how to explain to you that _you’re a prisoner!_” the man responded. “That means all your little hobbies stop when your keepers are gone, because I don’t get paid enough to follow you around while you feed chickens! Besides, you just want to get somewhere that you can slip away, Carlos already warned me you’d probably try it this time.”

“Like she couldn’t break your neck and field dress you with a letter opener if she wanted to,” Simon muttered to himself, rolling his eyes so hard Adam felt it in his own sockets.

Proving exactly where Adam had gotten his drama queen streak, Simon kicked the drawing room door open instead of turning the knob like a normal person, leaning in the doorway with a hand on one hip.

“Honey, I’m home,” he announced. “Victor, stop aiming that gun at me before I shove it down your fucking throat. Everyone knows you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn at five paces even if it was loaded.”

“Oh, come on!” The man inside groaned, throwing up both of his hands. “You’re not allowed to be here, Mendez!”

“And yet, here I am,” Simon answered, strolling into the room. “And I brought presents.”

Sophia gave Adam a shove, sending him stumbling into the room, then pushed past him. Janet was sitting in a chair over by the empty fireplace, looking very taken by surprise at their arrival.

Like Sophia, Janet’s hair was now trimmed short in an undercut, and her short-sleeved shirt showed a myriad of new scars on her exposed skin. He was less surprised about the state of his mother than he was about his sister; Adam had never for a moment doubted Janet would have shown any Galra that came close exactly how insane she could be.

Sophia ran to her for a hug, but Adam stayed back by Simon and crossed his arms awkwardly. He hadn’t had enough time with what he now knew to prepare for a face-to-face interaction.

“Hit the bricks, Victor,” Simon ordered, as Adam finally got a look at the man he was speaking to. Victor was a huge, barrel-chested man with a full mustache and beard who looked very uncomfortable in the suit that some hapless tailor had probably been forced to use twelve yards of fabric on. “Party’s over.”

“Come on, you know I can’t do that,” Victor defended. “I’ve got a job to do, man. Why do you always have to make my life difficult?”

“Because you work for assholes,” Sophia said helpfully.

“That,” Simon agreed. “Besides, your bosses are no longer in need of your services.”

Raji moved out of the way, and Tila kicked Amanda in the back to send her sprawling on the floor just inside the doorway. Victor looked at her, then looked up to find Carlos handcuffed in the hallway. He heaved a sigh.

“Great,” he muttered. “I knew I should’ve made them pay me up front for the extra hours.”

Simon took a wallet out of his back pocket and stepped forward, pulling out some bills that Adam couldn’t see. He shoved them in the front pocket of Victor’s suit jacket and nodded toward the door.

“Scram,” he repeated. “Maybe go start working on getting your bar open again. This part of town is finally going to be coming off lockdown soon.”

“Oh,” Victor looked at the bills in his pocket, then back down at Amanda. It took him a second or two, but then he started to understand that the people who’d had this area on lockdown were soon no longer going to be a problem. He slowly smiled, obviously in no hurry to provide backup for the two THEMIS agents. “_Oh._”

He shuffled out of the room, his huge frame making it necessary for the Nixa to move out of his way. Victor stepped out in the hall, pausing to give the bony crests in Taki’s hair a closer look.

“Might want to see a doctor about that,” Victor grunted, continuing on his way. “Don’t look healthy.”

He disappeared, and a moment later Keith came wandering into view, looking back over his shoulder. He came into the room, gesturing back the way he’d come, an almost dazed expression on his face.

“Teaching Care of Magical Creatures must not make ends meet,” Keith mumbled, coming to stand by Adam. He had a bag over his shoulder, which he indicated with a shrug. “I cleaned out the compartment.”

Adam cast a glance over at Sophia and Janet, who were currently behaving exactly like a normal mother and daughter who had just been reunited after a traumatic separation would act. Their happiness and relief just made him feel like more of an outsider, so he gestured for Keith to come with him and left the drawing room.

They went a few doors down, to what had once been a sitting room. He moved a low shelf out from in front of the door to get in and found that this room was one that hadn’t been reclaimed, just sealed over to keep the elements out. Half of the outer wall was missing and there was fire damage to some of the remaining wallpaper, everything a huge mess from exposure to sun and ship fallout since the invasion.

Adam picked up the overturned coffee table from one side, setting it upright and shoving some swollen, mildewed books under the broken leg to make it relatively even. He wiped it down with a piece torn from the ratty curtains, and Keith emptied the bag out onto it.

“I know technically these are ours,” Keith said, picking up the sealed black armor, “and that the ones who stowed them have been dead for a long time. But don’t you still feel a little bit disrespectful to be basically robbing a grave?”

“Is it robbing if it’s our own grave?” Adam asked, picking up the blue. He understood what Keith meant, though. Knowing these had once belonged to them but feeling as if they owned them were two different things.

Adam gently broke the seal on the plastic case, exposing the armor inside to the air for the first time in ten thousand years. He reached in to run his fingers across it, the alien yet familiar feel of a softer, more giving armor than what the Paladins used in the current day. The motion dislodged a small metal piece that he carefully pulled out, setting the case down and moving to the crumbled wall to look at it in the daylight.

It was a diamond shape, the metal piece that had once decorated the original helmet that went with this armor. Gold colored, with five tiny stones that were only visible up close; black, red, blue, green, and yellow. It was a very simple insignia, the minimalist crest of the original Paladins of Voltron.

It felt more familiar and welcoming to him than this place, where what was ostensibly his “real” family was currently gathered. His memories of this place were not good ones, and now that the curtain had been pulled away he could see that nobody involved had ever had a chance at a free life or happy home here. There was nothing whole here, everyone was broken, not just him.

He was part of that story, sure, but the golden ornament in his hand meant far more to him right now than anything going on here.

It had taken a very long time, and pretty much one disaster after another, but knowing the truth and seeing that it changed absolutely nothing finally let him put everything into perspective. He remembered very little of a past life from ten thousand years ago, but that timeline was inextricably entwined with the one of today, and the one of today could be summed up in these five tiny stones on a golden backdrop.

Takashi. Lance. Curtis. Mitch. Hunk, Pidge, Kuro, Allura and the girls. Even Keith and Lotor. Adam had spent so much of his life searching for where he biologically came from, it had long overshadowed what he’d been building along the way. But now he’d found what he had been looking for, and he was finally able to know with certainty that the family he’d built over the years was absolutely the place he belonged.

This…Simon, Sophia, Janet, the Nixa, it was definitely important and it would need to be addressed. Maybe, with time, it could even begin to be fixed. But it was only secondary.

The private admission brought an unexpected sense of peace with it. It was very strange, spending so long believing that who he was hinged on where he’d originally come from only to realize that it had absolutely nothing to do with who he’d actually become. He defined who he was in relation to the people he’d grown to love, not the ones who had never really been present.

What mattered, really, was that at this moment he was Dr. Adam Shirogane…soldier, fighter pilot, engineer, teacher, big brother figure, and now Paladin.

“Um…you okay?”

Adam glanced over and found Keith standing awkwardly beside him. He looked back at the ornament in his hand and nodded slowly, closing his hands around it to squeeze it lightly before sliding it into his pocket.

“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I’m fine. Better than fine, actually.”

Up above there was a sudden flash that drew their attention. There was nothing in the sky, and if Keith’s head hadn’t swiveled to face that direction as well Adam would have sworn he’d imagined it. Then there was another, and after a few beats, another.

“What the…?”

“Oh, crap,” Keith breathed, his eyes going wide. “The shield is going down. Why are they taking down the shield?”

They watched helplessly as the flashes continued, one after another, coming quicker as the deactivation process got underway. The door opened and Simon and Raji came to join them first, followed by the others. They all stood at the fallen wall, watching the sky light up with sparks.

When it was over, the view was once again clear, blue sky, as if nothing had happened.

“I’m going to hate the fact that I even asked, but what was that?” Simon asked reluctantly.

“Earth’s atmospheric defense system,” Keith answered. “It had to have been turned off. It couldn’t just die, the satellites themselves are completely powered by the sun.”

“Maybe there’s a software bug that had to be fixed,” Sophia suggested hopefully. “And it will boot back up in a few minutes.”

Up above, there was another flash, followed shortly after by two more. But these were different, streaking across the sky like shooting stars as they headed north at almost dizzying speed.

“They just came by wormhole,” Keith murmured. Adam did not need to ask him why he sounded so horrified, he was well acquainted with just how easily their worst enemies could access wormholes. “It’s the Last Stand all over again…we have to get back, now.”

_Now_, Adam felt the thought echo through his head as if it were coming from someone else. Urgent and plaintive. _We’re out of time_.

“Why?” Simon asked sharply. “What were those?”

“Enemy mechs,” Adam answered for Keith. He hadn’t been conscious to see them in action before, but Takashi had been pretty clear in his descriptions of the Battle of the Last Stand. “Big, nasty ones.”

_Get back to the ship_, Raji suggested._ It’s fast, we can have you back in half an hour._

“We don’t have half an hour,” Adam answered, darting back to the table. He grabbed the bag and shoved the armor back into it, making sure he had anything. “It’s fine, we’ve got a ride.”

The ground shook faintly with the unexpected weight of her arrival, even though Blue touched down relatively gently. She leaned down and opened her mouth, her loading ramp placed right at the edge of the collapsed opening.

“Thanks for the save,” Adam called as he sprinted around Raji and Simon, past Keith and up the ramp. “Gotta go!”

“Uh…yeah,” he heard Keith sputter behind him as he slipped through the ship entrance. “Gotta go. We’ll, um, talk to you later.”

“If there is a later,” Adam murmured to himself, tossing the bag into the storage chest by the controls. He dropped into Blue’s pilot seat, sliding into place as she read his request and pulled up her already booted viewscreens to replay the three impacts she had recorded near her a moment ago in the New Mexico desert.

Keith appeared next to him as they rose, leaning over him to turn on the comms.

“Blue Lion to Paladins!” Keith called, half-sitting on Adam’s lap to access the screen. “We’re on our way! Adam will drop me at the hangar for Black and we’ll both be in the sky in five!”

“Roger!” Lance’s reply was short and breathless, and sounded too preoccupied to be his usual talkative self. “Glad to hear you’re both okay, too busy now to celebrate. See you in the air.”

Adam shoved Keith off him and took the controls, setting their destination for New Mexico at top speed. He was going to have to land, get Keith to Black, retrieve the purple armor from where it was stored back in Blue’s cargo bay for safety, get changed, and be back in the air in five minutes.

Then they were going to have to survive three of these mechs that he’d seen before but never actually had a chance to fight against, and maybe actually survive. Which to be honest, was probably going to be the hardest part.

* * * * * * * * * *

Shiro ran down the hallway at full speed, miscalculating where he needed to turn thanks to the flashing red lights that flooded the hallway. He overshot the cross hall and tried to stop himself, tripping himself in the process and hitting the floor. He pushed himself up on all fours, hauling himself back where he needed to go while still trying to scramble to his feet, and ran full tilt down the next hallway.

His string of curses was drowned out by the wailing of the emergency alarm, as was his auditory perception of his environment. He couldn’t hear the other footsteps coming from the opposite direction and didn’t know there was someone there until he hit the other end of the hall and Veronica slammed into him from the right.

They both went down this time, in a struggling mass of limbs that would have been comical under any other circumstances. After a few strips and slips they managed to roll apart and sit up.

“What’s going on?” Shiro yelled over the blaring alarms. “What’s the emergency?”

“Earth broke the communications ban!” Veronica shouted back. “Laurentia took control of the Garrison base in some kind of coup, he asked for you and said he’d deactivated the shield! He demanded we bring the Atlas and Sincline back and said he was putting his own pilots in the Lions because ours were arrested!”

Shiro swore again as they both got to their feet, now both running in the same direction as he followed her back to the bridge.

“—is not a drill,” Coran was saying as they fell through the doorway together, the doors closing behind them to muffle the sound of the alarms in the hall. “The call came in a few minutes ago. You need to speed up the evacuation, get as many people on the ship as possible and we’ll do the same. We have to get back to Earth.”

He had Acxa on the comm screen, over in the cruiser’s medical bay. She nodded, giving him a smart salute, and ended the communication to go start giving orders.

“Kosmo and Hoshi showed up toward the end of the transmission,” Veronica said, panting for breath and now able to speak normally in the quieter space. “While I was still connected, they took out soldiers and our guys came in to take the command center back. So our side should be back in control of the base…the bad news is, the transmission ended when Laurentia shot the control console and probably damaged the temporary power line.”

“Was the transmission an encrypted burst?” Shiro asked, moving to his dais. “Or a live feed?”

“Live feed,” Veronica said dully. “He slapped a beacon on us then announced to the entire galaxy that Earth was unprotected and we were out here without Coalition backup.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Shiro frowned, opening up a line down to the officer’s medical bay. “Honerva showed up fast the last few times she saw we were weak, she’s not going to suddenly give us a break now. Allura? Lotor?”

“Yes, we’re here.”

“Bad news. Our location’s been compromised and Earth’s defense system is down,” Shiro got right to the point. “The clock is ticking, and we’re dead in the water right now with the Atlas running on one balmera crystal. Allura, you need to take Veronica and Romelle and get Sincline in the air. Lotor, you need to get over to the cruiser and get anyone who’s a trained pilot into one of the strikers that are left. James, can you get the MFEs in the sky?”

“Negative,” James replied. “Power levels are low from the flight out to the power station, we couldn’t recharge because the balmera system doesn’t provide enough power. MFEs are grounded.”

“Damn. Well, congratulations,” Shiro sighed. “You’re now four of the trained pilots who will be manning the cruisers strikers. Go with Lotor. Coran, where are we with the colony evac?”

“Most of the colonists have been moved,” Coran answered. “The highest risk and worst condition were moved first, those that are left are healthy colonists we were keeping separate from the sick ones.”

“Good, that means they can move fast,” Shiro supposed. “Get emergency personnel down there, tell them they need to drop everything and evacuate.”

Up at the front of the bridge, the main viewscreen suddenly flashed red. Coran’s displays disappeared as the emergency alert came up over them, showing the arrival of a Galra cruiser in the sky to the west of the colony. Two more arrivals were picked up over different parts of the planet, and those were probably only scouts with more to follow.

“Time’s almost up guys,” Shiro said urgently as Veronica bolted from the bridge to join Allura and Romelle with her ship. “We’ve got guests and it’s only a matter of time before they spot us. Let’s move, move, move!”

He closed the communications with the med bay, trusting everyone to do everything they could at top speed, and called down to engineering.

“Sam!” He said breathlessly when his friend’s face came up on the screen. “Get that second balmera wired to the shields, we need those up immediately.”

“Already working on it,” Sam said quickly, visibly in the middle of rerouting power on his console. “Three minutes and we’ll have a particle barrier. But we’re not going to be able to fly, Shiro. Not unless we get a wormhole open and divert all power from shields and life support to get through it. And we’ll drain the crystals if we try it, so there better be aid ships wherever we end up to get us oxygen, fast.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Shiro answered sharply, watching the blips on the viewscreen as the scout ships scanned for their exact location. “Just get me a particle barrier and get me it now.”

He closed the comm line and turned his attention to helping Coran run the bridge, just the two of them with no other backup and balmera crystals that just barely gave them life support while the last of the colonists were rushed to the dubious safety of the ships.

If he made it back to Earth alive, he was going to murder Laurentia himself.


	10. Chapter 10

**_4 Billion Years Ago_**:

The books were heavy, not just in her hands but weighing on her spirit as well. She walked like a woman on her way to the gallows, and in a way that’s exactly what she was. The Reaper packs had pretended for far too long that the gradual deterioration of the borderlands was just a natural phenomenon that would right itself with time, and that pretense was falling away.

There had always been some working feverishly behind the scenes, doing their best through their own fear and exhaustion to paint a rosier picture for the innocents in their care. The Golds did more than their fair share, to be honest, and the half-Iron had only come to know this in recent days. The invitation they had extended her to study the other elements and see if she would be interested in joining them on the Hill had been eye-opening.

She didn’t know about the other quintessence field races, but knowledge was open and free in the Reaper packs. Anyone who wanted to study was welcome, and rather than hoard power the Golds actively encouraged their people to advance their abilities and grow. Ascension to Gold was the next level for everyone, they believed, and because it was so dangerous and difficult they always offered their full help and support.

Perhaps that was why the Reapers had never lost a Gold outside of battle. Talk from the few Guardians that wandered by the borders was that a White was someone very special, that new ones came along every now and then but almost always eventually disappeared, and that there was only ever one.

The Reapers, unlike most Guardians, knew why that was. There was nothing hidden from them about Ascension, they knew what could happen if they weren’t fully prepared. Sentinels seemed knowledgeable about the situation as well, though they were a bit more scattered than Reapers. Their Onyxes ran the many Sentinel tribes as elders and only gathered under certain circumstances.

In short, knowledge among _most_ here was easy to come by, one simply had to want it.

And the half-Iron wanted it. She wanted it so very badly. Not necessarily for the power behind it, but because she loved to learn. Despite her reputation among the others as a warrior, she could spend days lost in old tomes of all kinds.

But that was simply no longer to be. The world was changing, falling apart, and sacrifices had to be made.

The half-Iron followed the beaten path on two legs instead of four, the quiet ‘clink’ of the two war scythes at her hips bouncing against her leg plates the only sound she made as she passed the Gold at the hilltop. He towered over her in his natural form and easily recognized her in this one, bowing his head lightly in greeting as she passed.

She didn’t know him. She didn’t actually know any of the Golds as far as she could tell, as she hadn’t formally met them yet.

She made her way toward the far side of the hill, where the Tower lay. It had been beautiful once, nobody had to tell her that. Although most of the windows were open holes these days, stray panes of stained glass remained that told of far more colorful portals sometime in the distant past. The top several levels of the Tower itself were no longer usable, decay and time making them crumble and become unsafe. The stone itself had once been a pretty cream color, but had long since gone gray. There was no point to trying to keep it clean, with no sunlight it didn’t really matter.

The half-Iron picked her way along the path carefully, well aware that there might be rocks or dips that wouldn’t affect a regular-sized Reaper but that would result in some pretty bad aches and pains for her in this form. Her life had been spent in eternal darkness, all the suns and stars burning out before she was born, but even at her age she still sometimes had trouble.

After a struggle that was far too long for her liking, she finally stumbled through the open doors of the Tower. Out of the fresh air and into the musty smell of old wood and inked pages, setting her burden down on the large wooden table there before grabbing the thick rope by the door and ringing the bell.

She was not the only one smaller than normal this evening. Writing and flipping pages were easier to do with hands and opposable thumbs, and she could hear a small handful of students up on the next level. A moment after ringing the bell a familiar Bronze appeared from a doorway in the back of the room, giving her a smile as she came to greet her, her shimmering robes glinting in the candlelight as she approached.

“Good afternoon,” the Bronze said politely, though the half-Iron didn’t know why they even used terms for different parts of nonexistent days anymore. “Returning your books so soon? You only just borrowed them yesterday.”

“Yes, I know,” she replied, looking forlornly at the pile on the table, hugging herself lightly. She wished for nothing more than to be at home right now, curled up _An Intermediate Understanding of Cosmos_ while her little ones played nearby. “I’m afraid there’s been a change of plans. I can’t continue studying anymore.”

The Bronze’s face fell, taking on a look of genuine concern that was clear even under the elegant metallic paint that decorated her brown skin.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, stepping around the table. “Has something happened?”

“Not yet,” the half-Iron admitted. “But it’s only a matter of time. Some Formless have begun crossing the moors, coming too close to the swamps for comfort. My children play there, just like a lot of the cubs do. I never thought we’d see the day, but it’s time to have active guards out there to hold those creatures back.”

“There are others,” the Bronze replied. “You’re not the only one here who can guard the moors, and you’re so close! You already mastered your native elements of Shadow and Lightning, and you’re very advanced in Blood and Dreams. Just a little farther with Chaos and the Golds will happily take you into advanced studies.”

“I’d love to, but I can’t,” the half-Iron insisted, already backing away before she could change her mind. “The electric storms that plague the moors mean only a Bronze can patrol it, but the Formless that are smart enough to come this far will eventually realize that’s the only element there and learn to counter it. I can protect myself from the storms and fight, and I’m faster than they are in case something goes wrong. I’m sorry, but everyone else’s safety has to come before my wants.”

The Bronze nodded solemnly, folding her hands in front of her as she walked the half-Iron back to the door.

“The Golds will understand,” the Bronze assured her. “Sacrifice is the sacrament of the Lord of Night. You should do what you feel you must do…but please, be careful.”

“I will,” the half-Iron promised, forcing a smile and a lie. “It’s not much of a sacrifice. Fighting is what I’m good at, and who doesn’t enjoy what they’re good at? Take care.”

She kept the smile in place as she turned and went back the way she came, keeping her head up high. In the distance, the ever-present electrical storm that cursed the far-off moors lit up the sky in vibrant flashes and streaks. So she didn’t really like to fight, so what? It was where her greatest skills lay.

If the only price asked of her for her people and family to be safe was for her to be a bit unhappy, then so be it. It was something she was willing to pay.

She shifted as she walked, no longer needing hands to hold books, returning to her more natural form as she reached the edge of the flat hilltop. The Gold seated here was still bigger than she was but not by nearly so much, nodding again to her as she left. But the half-Iron did not get far before the sound of leathery wings cut through the air, making her stop and look up. Just a little bit behind her, the Gold did the same.

She had seen Sentinels before, but mostly the young ones who had a greater penchant for causing their neighbors trouble. This one was huge, its faceted black scales glinting in the light of the torches as it dropped down out of the sky. The half-Iron braced for impact, but the dragon landed with a surprising lightness in the open space a small distance down the hill.

The hulking shape did not remain for long. Within a few steps the Sentinel had shrunk down smaller, to the two-legged form that was so much easier to conduct business in.

He would have been taller than most of them, even the Reaper males, but still slightly smaller than a Guardian. Clad in the traditional leather clothing of an Ancient Forest tribe, the half-Iron guessed that this Ascended Onyx had once been a Turquoise. He looked up at her as he passed, the elegant rainbow beads in his braided black hair framing a pleasant, sun-kissed face as he gave her a polite smile.

“Ma’am.”

Ma’am. _Ma’am_? How old did he think she _was_? From the look and sound of him he was barely a few thousand years younger than she was!

The Gold saw her offense before she could say anything and moved forward to interject, bowing his head lightly in greeting to the new arrival.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted, ushering the Onyx along the path toward The Tower. “We’ve been expecting you. I hope the trip wasn’t too turbulent.”

“Turbulent isn’t really the word,” the Onyx replied, following him briskly. “But crossing the borders is definitely getting harder and harder. I’m glad you’re all available, the news isn’t good.”

They moved out of earshot, and the half-Iron was forced to stop eavesdropping. It sounded as if the Golds had enlisted the help of at least one Sentinel, and an Onyx at that. In her lifetime she had never known the different races to cooperate, their cultures were just far too different. Things were steadily getting worse, if the long-separated peoples were being forced to cooperate for survival.

But that was the realm of the Golds, of which she had just decided not to become one, so it was none of her business. She had her own part to play, out there on the ground, physically holding back whatever enemies she could while those wiser than her tried to save them all from behind closed doors.

* * * * * * * * * *

**_Current day_**:

The dust clouds rising up from the high speed impacts in the desert loomed large, creeping slowly upward to the point of casting shadows in the morning sun. In the few seconds after their appearance the entire airfield was quiet, but then the reality of what had just occurred set in and the seasoned soldiers around them began to dissolve into barely organized noise and activity.

Kuro remained frozen in place, not really seeing or hearing what was going on around him. He had seen these things in action before, back on Colony One, and it had only taken one of them to wipe the floor with a fully formed Voltron.

For a handful of heartbeats, he wasn’t standing on the airfield. He was back on Colony One, with Honerva in arms reach promising to take him back to her lab. He was back in a cage just barely tall enough to stand, starving and suffering from thirst. He was out in a violent electrical storm, pinned on his back by a heavier opponent slowly pushing him down into the flooded ground, mud threatening to flow over his face and drown him even as a gaping maw of razor teeth snapped at his neck. He was small again, being called a runt due to his smaller size in comparison with other bronzes, wandering too far in the night to prove how brave he was only to end up with a gaping wound in his side and a terribly injured mother who had ignored her complete lack of battle skills to defend her only cub.

He was many places, the highlight reel of things that haunted his dreams playing for him now while he was awake in vivid, living color. And, briefly, it all felt disturbingly real.

Many peoples’ reactions to being shaken out of that might have been defensive. They might have become violent, or they might have tried to push their assailant away, or they might have become combative. Kuro shrank back, very nearly tripping over Hoshi to wrench his arm free from the hand that had tried to pull it.

“_Don’t touch me_,” he demanded reflexively, making Curtis pull back and put both of his hands up where they could be seen.

“Sorry! I’m sorry,” Curtis answered, looking down at Hoshi and back at him. “And I can see you’re having an issue but I can’t let you work through it right now. There isn’t time. Come on, we have to go, okay?”

He reached for Kuro again, this time more slowly but with the same sense of urgency. Kuro hugged himself tighter but didn’t pull away this time as Curtis caught his arm and began to guide him away from the control center.

“Gail!” He barked as people started to run all over the place. “Where’s Ryou’s laptop?”

Kuro didn’t hear the answer. He was looking across the airfield, most of the panic becoming background noise to his daze. He could see the Lion hangar there, its door opening to reveal the Blue and Black Lions sitting inside.

But the Blue Lion was on the move, ducking under the too-slow door and launching up into the air. She moved quickly, strangely quiet, as if she were alive and too pressed for time to put on a show of roaring and running around before making an exit. In a flash she was gone, moving at full speed.

“Hoshi, can you take Gail to get that laptop?” Curtis was saying. “Take her back to the communications room where it’s safe, that laptop is our only active link to turn our shield back on right now. Then come join us.”

Behind the hangar, the Green Lion flickered into view as its camouflage was dropped. A moment later Red and Yellow touched down nearby and she came to join them, the three Paladins here on the ground darting past them to get to their ships. In barely the span of time it took to take a breath they were taking off, the wind of their backdraft ruffling his hair and clothes.

Kuro barely noticed any of it. His ears were ringing and it was hard to breathe.

“Hey.” Curtis appeared in front of him, now holding both of his upper arms and giving him a gentle shake. “Ryou. I need you to snap out of it. I know this is hard, but this is life or death we’re talking about right now.”

Kuro turned his focus to the face in front of him, the tired blue eyes looking down at him. He concentrated on Curtis, forcefully pulling himself away from the memories. It _was_ hard, because they were hitting so strongly that it was difficult to tell where reality ended and the flashbacks began. He had to tell himself that what was flashing through his head wasn’t real, that he was standing on Earth on a military base and that now was the time to have his wits about him. Had to force himself to breathe.

“I’m okay,” he lied as he managed to pull himself into the present, knowing he shouldn’t feel ashamed of still needing to recover but feeling some shame in it nonetheless. “I’m fine.”

“Okay, good,” Curtis gave a small nod, but it was obvious he didn’t believe him. This simply wasn’t the time to argue. “Come on, I need you to come with me.”

They started walking across the airfield, back toward the main building where they’d initially come. A moment later the Blue Lion touched down nearby, making them stop, lowering her head so Keith could bound out before taking off again. Keith ran over to them, eyes wide.

“What’s going on?” He asked. “What happened here?”

Kuro absently noted that he looked a mess. He was covered in bandages of all shapes and sizes, and was sorely in need of a shower and change of clothes.

“Mechs are here,” Kuro answered needlessly, pointing back over his shoulder. He felt a hollow sort of calm, that familiar acceptance that something bad was about to happen and there was nothing he could do about it. “Idiots took down the shield, screamed out into the void that our defenses went down.”

“I’m going to get the shields back up,” Curtis promised. “And get the zaiforge cannon working again, maybe we can use it. But we need you in the air.”

Keith nodded and backed away from them, and Curtis started to pull him again. Kuro let himself be tugged along a few steps, but as the fog slowly continued to lift he looked back at Keith.

The younger man was trying to call Black to him across the airfield, but obviously with no success. He gave up and started running toward the hangars.

That, for some reason, snapped Kuro out of his fit. His concern pulled him roughly back into the present, his brain shedding the past only with the urgency that pulled it to other matters that he could control. He pulled free from Curtis and jogged toward the hangars.

“Wait!” He called, doing his best to be heard over the noise. “Keith! Stop!”

Ahead of him, Keith slowed down and looked around. It took him a moment to realize Kuro was calling him and stop, and Kuro had to grab him to pull himself to a stop as well. He gripped the Paladin by the shoulders, forcing him to look at him.

“Lance said you couldn’t connect to the Black Lion, he said you took one of Lotor’s shots to block quintessence,” Kuro said breathlessly. “Is that true?”

“Yeah, but it will be fine,” Keith quickly assured him, trying to shrug him off. “I can still pilot, we’ll be all right!”

“No, _stop_,” Kuro said forcefully, pulling him back and making him stay still. “Do you remember before you left, when I said I could tell you things as long as you didn’t ask me how I know, can you promise me that now?”

Curtis reached them, looking quizzically between them. Keith glanced up at him, but then looked back at Kuro, nodding.

“Good, then listen very carefully,” Kuro spoke quickly, knowing he didn’t have a lot of time to tell this poor kid what he needed to know. “Quintessence is not addictive. You cannot get addicted to it, it’s impossible. Lotor will learn that eventually, but I’m speeding this up and telling you now. You know how people have blood types, and they have a Rhesus factor? Their blood can be either positive or negative, and a person who’s negative can’t have positive blood donated without it making them sick?”

Keith nodded slowly, clearly not knowing where this was going.

“It’s the same thing with quintessence,” Kuro pushed on to his point. “Quintessence is life, but it’s also power, and that power runs on a spectrum. It can be white, it can be black, and it can be gray. If you’re tuned into the black end of the spectrum, but you try to use the white end, it’s going to fuck with your head. Someone like you or Lotor, if you try to use Alchemy or pull quintessence through a ship that runs alchemically…”

He trailed off, letting Keith follow that to its inevitable conclusion. There was nothing for a second, then he saw the exact moment what he was saying clicked.

“Anger problems, sleeplessness, that feeling like you’re chasing a high, those are all after-effects of using something that doesn’t mesh with your body,” Kuro confirmed. “That _can_ be blocked, but your natural sensitivity to quintessence can’t be. You just need to pull from the right end and you can work around the block.”

“I’ve been trying!” Keith protested. “I’ve tried everything, constantly, it’s like there’s a wall there!”

“Because you’re only trying what you’ve learned since you became a Paladin,” Kuro corrected. “You need to think back to before that. Remember those runes and sigils you found in the cliffs, how you were able to decipher them? That’s not because you remembered them. It’s because the writer was an Alchemist, and she infused them to project their meaning on anyone who was sensitive. You picked that up and translated it through your natural ability. Close your eyes, think back. Try to concentrate on how it felt to do that, and then do the same thing now.”

There was an explosive sound behind them as the Lions began to engage their attackers, but Kuro forced himself to remain still and not panic. Keith obviously wanted to run to the Lion hangar and join them but Kuro held him still, and finally he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Kuro let go of one of Keith’s shoulders, reaching down to take his hand instead. He held it firmly, pushing quintessence through the contact, the faint purple light of druidism dancing across their skin. Just a little, just enough to remind Keith what he should be looking for.

Keith frowned, and Kuro knew he recognized the feeling. He could feel it when Keith started pulling, twisting the quintessence around on his own in a way he had thought was completely blocked. He also felt it when Keith let go of him and reached outward, past the block that had been in place for several days.

Across the airfield, through the open hangar door, Kuro saw the Black Lion’s eyes and outer lamps light up. After a moment the ship began to move, following the call that was finally coming.

Keith opened his eyes and stared at the approaching ship, stunned. When he looked back at Kuro, Kuro only let him go and stepped back.

“Come on,” Curtis said again, more urgently this time as he took Kuro’s arm. “We really need to go.”

Up above, Green went pinwheeling through the air, flying toward the base. Blue appeared, catching her by the tail as she whizzed by and keeping her airborne to avoid a crash. Any time for conversation was now gone.

Keith darted up into Black, and Kuro let himself be pulled as the final ship joined the others in the air.

“That was risky,” Curtis chastised him as they stepped through the open doors and back into the building, muffling some of the noise in the sky. “The others already think you’re a Druid, you push too far and they’ll figure out you’re something more.”

“He said he wouldn’t ask questions, and he won’t,” Kuro replied, shrugging one shoulder. “I trust him to keep that promise.”

“Is that the inborn Shirogane weakness for troubled kids?” Curtis wondered. “Or do you just still have some of Shiro’s memories of when Keith was younger?”

“Neither,” Kuro replied, stopping abruptly and making Curtis come to a halt as Hoshi appeared at his side. “I have two kids, he reminds me of them.”

“You have two…?” Curtis was momentarily thrown, but Kuro ignored it.

“Where are we going?” He asked instead. “It took a lot out of you just to get here in the first place, Hoshi can take us from here.”

He expected an argument, for Curtis to say he was fine and could make it. But he didn’t, which sent a stabbing ache through Kuro’s chest with the implication that it was nearly time.

“The Atlas hangar,” Curtis answered, holding onto Kuro has Kuro put an arm around his middle. “Preferably toward the northern wall.”

Kuro held Hoshi with his free hand, and after the familiar burst of cold they blinked into the empty, echoing hangar. Curtis began walking toward a secure-looking door in the far corner and Kuro followed, feeling like he was moving through deep mud.

He only now noticed how shaky his legs were, how exhausted he was from expending so much power in the last half hour. He was going to have to rest soon, if only for a few minutes, even if they didn’t really have time for it.

Curtis reached the door and put his hand on a high scan pad that rested at head level. Instead of opening the door, the pad slid open to reveal a different panel, one where Curtis now punched in a code. After it beeped, he ducked down slightly to let it scan his eye. Now the door opened, and he took Kuro’s arm again and pulled him into darkness.

The door closed behind them, and after a moment of soft shuffling old, fluorescent lights flickered on to reveal that they were in a small hangar almost akin to a large garage. There was a work bench to one side, gathering dust and forgotten, and on the other something that looked almost but not quite like a Galra pod.

“This is a prototype that was made before the MFEs full plans were approved and implemented,” Curtis said as he came to stand next to Kuro near the ship. “It was designed by Adam, who at the time was still just an engineer and pilot. He believed Galra technology was more suited to war than Altean, and designed it based on the ship that Shiro crashed in after he escaped and got back to Earth.”

“Okay,” Kuro replied, frowning and looking the ship over. It didn’t look terribly different from regular Galra transport in many respects, he could already tell he knew how to fly it for the most part. “And?”

“And right now, besides the Lions, it’s the only spacefaring ship on the planet we have direct access to,” Curtis replied. “Any ally ships here are civilian merchants and travelers, and even now they’re probably all taking off with as many people as they can carry. You need to take this and go with them before that shield goes back up.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Kuro asked sharply, pulling his eyes away from the ship. “You want me to just leave? After all the time you spent convincing me to stay?”

“That was before this happened,” Curtis answered, reaching forward to open the boarding airlock. “Complete honesty for a minute…this planet’s going to fall, Ryou. It was safe until those defenses came down, but with three mechs out there and nothing to really defend ourselves with but a shield that’s still booting back up and a zaiforge cannon we have to be really careful with, we’re screwed. Adam’s not ready, Keith couldn’t call his Lion until five minutes ago. They’ll put up a fight, but they’re going to lose. You need to take Hoshi and go. I’d say take Kosmo too, but I doubt he’ll leave Keith behind.”

“Just me and Hoshi,” Kuro repeated, getting exactly what Curtis meant. “You’re going to stay here.”

“I don’t have too much longer left,” Curtis smiled, the painfully calm smile of one who saw the end and accepted his fate. “Every minute I can squeeze out of this life, I’ll use to try and keep this place safe. We’re going to fail, but we’re going to try. Humans are stupid like that. Maybe someday, after the Atlas is back and the Coalition comes in numbers, they’ll take Earth back and make it safe to come back to. But until then, you need to run.”

He turned, putting his hands on Kuro’s hips to pull him closer, and lightly kissed his forehead, then rested his head against Kuro’s.

“If she wins here, she’ll come looking for the Paladins,” he murmured. “And she’ll come looking for you. I’m not going to let her take you back. So go, okay? While you have a chance. Find somewhere to hide, and find the others after the dust clears. I love you, be careful.”

He let Kuro go, giving him a push toward the open airlock.

“Hoshi?” He asked, turning to the wolf, who let out a low whimper. “Can you take me back to the communications room before you go?”

She padded over with her tail down, giving a soft whine. Curtis put a hand on her without looking back at Kuro, and with a soft pop they were gone and the room was empty.

Kuro stood at the base of the short loading ramp, staring up into the empty shuttle. He waited to feel something, anything, but nothing came. He felt nothing but an almost cold hollowness, like everything he was had been ripped out and thrown away.

_So this is what it’s like to finally break completely_.

He didn’t feel sad. He didn’t feel angry. He didn’t even feel any sense of urgency anymore. There was nothing but tiredness, a bone-deep weariness that made him want to lay down and give up. Kuro was still standing right where he’d been left when Hoshi returned, padding quietly over to stand next to him, nuzzling his arm.

“I guess we should go,” he murmured, looking down at her. She flattened her ears and lowered her head, her tail hanging limp.

“I know,” he said dully. “There’s nowhere to go. It’s never going to end. We could run to the end of this universe, it would be pointless. Every universe is falling apart, the quintessence field is crumbling.”

Kuro’s tired legs finally decided they didn’t want to hold him. He slid down to the floor, putting his arms around Hoshi’s neck and burying his face against her soft fur.

“I’m tired,” he whispered. “I’m tired of fighting and losing. I’m tired of everything being taken away. I’m tired of running and never being able to stop. I wish both parts of me had just died in that lab so I didn’t have to do this anymore. But I didn’t, and I’m here, and it’s not fair.”

He felt the ground shake and pulled away from Hoshi, raking his sleeve across his face to wipe away the hot tears he hadn’t even realized were falling. He didn’t know why he was crying, it wasn’t like he felt anything. There wasn’t any emotion to it, it was just water running down his face at this point.

“Come on,” he urged, pulling the wolf lightly by the scruff of her neck to urge her into the shuttle. “We need to be gone before the shield goes up. More running, more hiding. The usual.”

He made his way to the cockpit and dropped heavily into one of the two pilot seats, powering up the ship. The controls were a mix of Galra and human, not too far off from the MFE they’d let him play with last week and easy enough to figure out. He turned the ship on and flipped on the communications feeds, bringing up the scanner screen that would tell him where other airborne bodies were that he needed to avoid.

_“On your left!”_

_“I know, I see it! I just can’t move fast enough to dodge these things!”_

_“All uninjured Academy staff, report to the Eastern hangar to help evacuate remaining students into the lower tunnels.”_

_“Who’s piloting these things? There’s no way these are just a handful of Altean kids!”_

_“I’ve got two Puig merchant ships and a Selian civilian jumper making a run for it to the east, someone help me cover them!”_

_“Ground Units Beta, Delta, Gamma, and Theta, report to the entrances. Open all gates and help get any civilians we can onto the grounds. Base particle barrier will deploy in five minutes.”_

_“All Galaxy Garrison bases, initiate full defense protocol. Evacuate as many citizens underground as possible, all international particle barriers should deploy in ten minutes.”_

There was a loud click as Kuro shut the comm lines back down, killing the noise. The unit was picking up all live broadcasts from all over, the sounds of a worldwide panic. And they should be panicking; like Curtis said, this planet was going to fall.

Kuro sat back in his seat, but didn’t open the hangar doors. He made no move to take off, sitting in the dimly lit silence. He understood then that this was the moment he had been dreading.

This was the shuttle he had heard them reference in his vision in the Abyss. He was now in the tiny window when he had to choose whether to accept the fate he’d seen or run from it and be considered a coward, just like he’d been trying to run for the last ten thousand years.

_You can decide to leave and preserve your own life, _Gold had said._ There’s nothing wrong with that. You can decide to stay and face what’s coming, there’s nothing wrong with that either. But whatever you do will be your decision and no one else’s, you can’t blame anyone else for what you choose. You make the choice, period. And I think when you come to terms with that, you’ll be at peace with whatever decision you make._

In other words, he couldn’t tell himself that he needed to stay because others would think badly if he kept running. And he couldn’t tell himself that he needed to go because Curtis wanted him to. He had to make a decision, and it had to be his own decision that he was willing to accept the consequences for.

He knew this was the shuttle. He knew where the armor that he had seen himself die in was stowed. He knew Curtis had access to the armor he’d seen him die in as well. He knew a short time from now was when it would happen.

The only thing he wasn’t sure of was what he was going to do.

* * * * * * * * * *

Lotor ran at full speed through the empty colony corridors, throwing open every door he passed and pausing to look inside. Every space that had been usable had been taken up, especially once they’d gotten heating and light restored, to help spread everyone out and limit spread of the virus. People could still be resting in some of these rooms, and he was not willing to risk leaving anyone behind.

Not for the first time since he’d come down here, his effort was rewarded as he threw open the door to a small living quarters and startled a young woman who had fallen asleep in a chair with a book.

“Evacuate!” He commanded. “Leave everything behind and go, get to one of the ships!”

Like the rest of the colonists, she didn’t need to be told twice and she didn’t ask for specifics. She darted to the door in the wall that slid to the side to reveal one of the quarters’ two beds, shaking awake a man and half-hauling him out of bed. The two of them scrambled out and bolted for the exit as Lotor moved swiftly on.

So far he had found three rooms with people inside, an unfortunate consequence of being unable to keep the full colony maintained. The alarms were not ringing everywhere, and some people weren’t hearing the warning. But he would stay here until he was absolutely sure he was the only one left, or until he was forced to leave by circumstance.

He had come down to help with the final evacuation, but as he’d watched his people literally running for their lives, yet again, he’d finally understood that they would always be running. Altea was nothing more than a dream, a faint and far off memory, and these people would never be strong enough to thrive as their ancestors once had. Not in a universe so hostile to their very existence.

They ran because ten thousand years ago he had personally made the decision to send them running. The Alteans who had survived their planet’s initial destruction could have found homes in other places. They could have married into other species, could have lived full lives, and at the very least their descendants would not be spending their entire lives fleeing. But Lotor had made a choice, he had gathered as many of them as he could and he had told them to run.

And now they were still running.

Halfway through the building, as he tried to make sure nobody remained, he realized it was time to make another choice. It was one he knew he should have made before, but he had been hiding from it. It was a choice that he knew had to be made eventually, that someday he would no longer be able to put it off.

That day had finally come today. There simply were no other options anymore.

Lotor turned down a familiar hallway that took him to the middle of the colony, to the control hub where everything was run from. He was panting as he stepped inside, slowing to a stop and looking around. There was nobody here, anyone who had been in here had gotten the command to flee.

Up on the screen he could see the warnings flashing and his heart sank. Three Galra cruisers coming toward them at speeds that said they’d been spotted. Two more to the north, one to the east, two to the south. Others being picked up around the planet’s surface were beginning to move toward them as well.

It was now or never.

Lotor sat down in one of the empty chairs at the main console and punched in his override code on the colony controls. The screen ran an authorization algorithm and required a second code, and when he entered that one the screens shifted from welcoming blue to a warning orange. He looked up at the screen, at the quickly approaching attackers, and turned on the long range communications.

“This is Emperor Lotor, son of Emperor Zarkon and Empress Honerva, the Last Son of Daibazaal,” he announced his full title calmly, despite how tightly his hands clenched in his anxiety. “I am once again requesting the loyalty of the Galran people, at a moment of dire need.”

He paused, knowing that what was about to be said couldn’t be undone, and once it was out there it would be known to all.

“I am not alone,” he admitted. “I request aid not for myself and the warriors of the Voltron Coalition, but for the people of Altea. They’ve long been painted to you as a great enemy, but this is a lie. It was cultivated by the witch Haggar to manipulate the Galra, which she has been doing for ten thousand years. She seeks to silence all dissent and take complete control of the empire.

“At this moment, fringe faction ships are bearing down on a colony of Altean civilians, unarmed and untrained. They are weak, they are sick, and there is no honor in what will happen here if help isn’t received. This will not be a glorious battle, it will be a massacre. Many agreed when I took the throne that a new age of Daibazaal was dawning, one where the Galra could become powerful warriors worthy of respect instead of the marauding animals so many had come to see us as. I am asking you again to help me fulfill that promise.

“I will not command action or attempt to demand obedience. whether you choose to uphold the oath you swore to serve me or not is on you and your descendants. None of you are slaves any longer, the choice is yours. Our coordinates follow.”

He ended the transmission and took a deep breath, his hand hovering over the console for a moment. Finally he lowered it, pressing his palm to the scanner and activating the colony’s S.O.S. beacon. Lotor had never thought he would use it, it was just a standard part of the systems this one was built on. But now it had been activated, and was broadcasting their location for anyone to see.

And, sadly, it didn’t matter if nobody came. It didn’t matter if more enemies came. This was already the end of the road for Altea’s children, they couldn’t get more dead than they were going to shortly be.

Lotor rose and left the control hub, locking the door behind him. He started running in the opposite direction of the one he’d come, continuing his search for anyone who had been left behind.

* * * * * * * * * *

“_None of you are slaves any longer, the choice is yours. Our coordinates follow._”

James sighed heavily as the final words of the broadcast played over his comm, glad that none of the Alteans who weren’t already preparing for war were near anything with a comm link to hear it. Lotor wasn’t the kind of guy who gave up very easily, this just verified that this was the end of the line.

He had never thought he’d ever get to travel in space, let alone that it would be where he would die. Oddly enough, he wasn’t scared.

He also wasn’t resigned, hopeless, sad, or any of the other long list of feelings a lot of people would be experiencing. He’d been to therapy, just like everyone else, but his wounds seemed to heal much cleaner than other people’s. He had no PTSD, no fear of dying, and if he did have a moderate volume of nightmares he quickly forgot about them and they didn’t impact his life.

James was a man who had expected to be dead a long time ago. He’d made his peace with the universe several times over, if he was going to die today then he was ready.

But that did not mean he was going to sit back and let it happen easily.

He stopped halfway down the hallway of the Galra cruiser, flattening himself back against the wall and motioning for the other three members of his team to keep walking.

“Keep going,” he ordered. “Get to the strikers, get in the air. Keep these people covered as long as you can.”

“Where are you going?” Ryan asked, frowning as he started to go back the way they’d come.

“I have something to do first,” James called back. “Nadia, take the lead!”

“There’s no time to be playing around!” Nadia exclaimed, starting to follow him. “They don’t have nearly enough pilots who can fight in those strikers, they need every one of us they can get!”

“And they’ll get it!” James returned. “Get in the air and take point until I get back!”

He started running before she could say anything else, back across the docking bay and down the loading ramp. He ducked and wove through the frightened people trying to evacuate quickly, sprinting across the small open space between the cruiser and the Atlas.

He went for the high-speed lift, up to the officer’s medical quarantine where he’d last seen his target.

Luck was with him. Veronica was just coming to join Allura and Romelle, who had been waiting for her to change into her armor. They started to leave but James ran up to them, grabbing Romelle’s arm.

“I need to talk to you real quick!” He said breathlessly, nodding to the other two. “Two seconds, tops.”

“Hurry up,” Allura begged, pulling on her helmet as she and Veronica took off down the hall.

The quarantine room was wide open, since everybody here had already been exposed but had all been vaccinated. James pulled Romelle through the open door and across the space where doctors were running back and forth. He tugged her through the first open door there, ducking into Nikolaev’s room.

He had looked like he was sleeping, but when he heard them come in and close the door he cracked open one eye.

“Uh, hey,” James greeted awkwardly. “‘sup?”

“My temperature,” Nikolaev said sleepily.

“Right. Sorry, just needed a bit of privacy, go back to sleep,” James told him before turning back to Romelle. “I need you to take me out with you. In Jade.”

“I don’t need you in Jade,” Romelle answered, matching his loud whisper. “I can handle it, you’ve been training me. We need you out in a striker, we don’t have nearly enough combat pilots out there.”

“Not to fight, I need you to be my ride!” James answered. “The Sincline ships are faster than the strikers, I need you to drop me out at the power station!”

“The power station?” Romelle looked at him like he’d just said he ate bugs for fun. “We’re about to be attacked by a fleet of Galra ships, you can’t go to the power station! That’s going to be number one on their list of targets!”

“We need that crystal!” James protested. “The Atlas isn’t going to be able to fly and defend itself and keep life support on just the balmera crystals we’ve got, it’s just not happening. Somebody needs to go get it, and I can do it. I helped Ziran with the install, I know how to get it out of there safely.”

Romelle bit her lip, looking up suddenly as they both felt the trembling of a cruiser firing on the ground nearby.

“We do need that crystal,” she whispered. “We can’t save these people without it. But we also need pilots, can’t somebody else go?”

“There is nobody else,” James insisted. “I’m not going to risk Nadia, Ryan or Ina by sending them in when it will be a main target. Shiro and Lotor have to run the two ships, Allura is leading Sincline, Ziran is practically on machines to be alive right now. I know you heard Lotor’s S.O.S., this is desperate.”

Romelle nodded reluctantly, opening the door to the room again.

“Okay, you’re right,” she agreed. “I can drop you and then go join the fight. But how will you get back?”

“I’ll figure it out,” James promised, nudging her out of the room first. He waved back at Nikolaev, who was now trying to reach a water cup on the table nearby with some difficulty. For some reason, Shiro had him handcuffed to the bed. “Um, feel better.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Nikolaev said pleasantly, giving him a thumbs up. “Good luck, don’t die.”

Romelle ran after Allura and Veronica with James hot on her heels, both of them pulling on their helmets as they ran. When they reached the hangar, Opal and Carnelian were already taking off to engage cruisers that were beginning to attack.

“We have to go fast!” Romelle shouted as they vaulted up onto Jade’s wing and dropped into the cockpit. “They need Sincline!”

“Go as fast as this thing can go then!” James called back, bracing himself instead of putting on a harness. “Don’t even stop when you get there, just slow down! My boosters will get me to the ground!”

Romelle nodded and James held on tight as Jade shot out of the open airlock. He had experienced the ship’s high speeds before but never without some kind of safety binding, he held on for dear life as the inside of the hangar fell away and Jade moved out into the open, flipping and twisting to avoid fire from strikers that had been deployed by the cruisers that were bearing down on them.

“Sorry!” Romelle called back when she heard him let out a screech at finding himself hanging from the seat when she went upside down. “Had to avoid a bunch of them!”

“It’s fine!” James said weakly. “You gotta do what you gotta do!”

The Sincline ship flew low, trying to stay under the notice of attackers and for the most part succeeding. It was only a few moments before they were coming up on the power station, thanks to Romelle going heavy on the speed.

“Are you sure you can make it down?” She called back worriedly as she released the canopy and James stood up on his seat.

“I’m not sure about anything!” He admitted, closing his helmet’s screen against the wind. “But slow down a bit so the momentum doesn’t take me a few miles out and we’ll find out!”

“Be careful!” She said as he felt the ship begin to dramatically slow on approach. “Come back safe!”

He couldn’t promise that, so he didn’t. As Jade came up on the power station and Romelle pulled the ship into a curve, he leapt and tried not to pass out as his support was suddenly gone and there was nothing but open air beneath him.

His stomach flip-flopped as he fell, the ground rushing up to meet him at a terrifying speed. At the last minute he hit his boosters, unable to come to a complete stop without burning out all their power but slowing himself dramatically.

He still hit with a bit of force, landing on a grass-covered hill and letting out an inelegant squawk as he involuntarily cartwheeled down to the bottom. When he finally came to a stop he lay on his back for a moment, gathering his wits and glad nobody had been there to see.

A slight tilt of his head brought an oncoming cruiser into view, which made him scurry to his feet. That ship was coming toward him, it had undoubtedly noticed the atmospheric membrane and honed in on the power source. James couldn’t let the crystal be lost, or worse, let it fall into enemy hands. He made a run for the entrance elevator, inputting the code incorrectly twice before he managed to get it right in his clumsy attempts to move quickly.

In all honesty, he shouldn’t have known the code at all. But he had watched Lotor and Ziran punching numbers into the various consoles through the station and now knew all the access codes.

It was a new phenomenon, his improved memory, and he had not discussed it with anyone else. He was sure it had something to do with his prosthetic leg, as if the wiring that ran through his body to make it work with his brain had the added upgrade of extra memory storage. James didn’t even have to try anymore, he just watched something or listened to it and then could remember it later with perfect clarity.

He had been intending to ask Ziran to look into it, since the engineer seemed so intrigued with the leg. And Ziran was one of the few people he felt would look into it with no ulterior motives and tell him the truth.

The lights flipped on as he hit switches on his way by, a nice change from the first time he’d been here when everything had been dark and drained of power. That helped speed his trip down the halls and to the larger lift into the “murder pit” dramatically, taking him only a few minutes instead of the much longer trek it had been before.

The storage lift was halfway down to the bottom when a loud explosion echoed through from outside, and the entire power station shook violently. James grabbed the hand rail for balance, but another direct hit and jolted the whole lift, flipping him over the rail and leaving him hanging. The lights flickered and went out, and the lift came to a slow stop.

For a moment there was silence, except for the faint ringing in his ears. James hung in complete darkness, holding his breath and waiting.

He heard a cracking sound up above, but couldn’t tell if it was in the shaft or nearby in the building. That question was rendered moot when the station took another hit, this time hard enough that he could hear parts of the shaft beginning to fall down around him and knew that meant the rest of the building was crumbling. A chunk of what felt like metal hit one of his arms, scraping along it to his shoulder before falling down to the ground below.

The rail he was holding onto seemed to jump in his hands, then he fell several yards only to be yanked to a halt again. The lift supports had given away, leaving it hanging sideways, and when he tried to pull himself up the whole thing shifted ominously. Too much movement was going to bring it down.

But from the quiet creaking noises the lift was making, James at a feeling it was going to go down soon anyway. One more good shot at the building and this whole thing was falling.

He looked down, trying to aim his helmet light into the abyss below, but he was so high up that all he illuminated was the maintenance ladder on the far wall. It was positioned to be out of the way of the lift—when that lift wasn’t hanging by its side from a thread—and was too far away to reach.

“How bad can it really hurt?” James whispered to himself, trying to picture where he was in relation to the floor. “Besides a whole fucking lot.”

The decision was made for him when another explosion rocked the station, the sounds of laser fire destroying the building drowned out by a loud, groaning creak as the lift finally gave away. James had no other choice, releasing his hold and letting himself free fall in the darkness.

His helmet light wasn’t particularly steady, and by the time he saw the ground it was almost too late. He hit his boosters but couldn’t slow himself completely, slamming into the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of himself.

Up above he heard the deafening crashing and banging of the lift platform hurtling toward him, invisible in the dark. He looked around wildly, almost overlooking the exit as his light flashed past it, only spotting it at what felt like the last second. The door was closed, and with the power out there was no way to open it quickly and no choice but to scramble to the doorway and flatten himself against the door, using the shallow doorway to protect his face and torso.

Metal slammed into metal behind him, and he felt a jagged edge drag down his back. His armor took the brunt of it, miraculously saving him from immediate death, but the sharp pain he felt told him he was still deeply scratched. His first instinct was to try to buck away from the source of the injury, but he held fast and remained still even after the platform crashed.

True to his prediction, there was another explosion and the station shook again. Metal shrieked against metal as the crumbled heap behind him shifted with the shaking, the most dangerously loose pieces settling.

It had to be strikers firing on the station, or else it would have come down by now. The cruiser he’d seen had probably been locked in on Jade then, and sent its fighter pilots to take down the station.

James knew he didn’t have long. They would keep firing until this place was nothing but a smoldering heap, and they’d do worse to the cruiser and Atlas if he didn’t get the crystal. Sincline was a badass weapon, especially in the hands of the three Amazons that piloted it, but even it could only handle so many ships.

He gave himself a few seconds to breathe, then turned his attention to the door. He didn’t have the same strength that the Alteans had, so prying it open was going to take a bit of elbow grease. He turned his attention to the pile of scrap behind him, running his light over it until he spotted a length of bent metal.

Getting to it was a good time, the broken mess was unstable and kept shifting under his feet, but he quickly retrieved it and returned to the door. The makeshift lever took a lot of muscle power, and his arms felt like he’d pulled them out of their sockets by the time the door was almost open enough for him to squeeze through. He needed it just a little bit more, enough to fit his helmet through.

The world jerked out from under him suddenly, making him fall back onto the broken platform. A sharp piece of something hit him in the back, just shy of where he was injured, making him briefly see stars and swear he had just been impaled. Huge chunks of steel and concrete began to rain down, allowing him to see daylight through the cracks in the high ceiling.

The power station had been so decimated that all of the floors above were gone. So why were they still firing?

That had to mean that the crystal was still doing its work. Whatever alchemy Allura had done to reroute that thing’s power to the other towers, it must still be holding strong. That was the only reason they would still be trying to destroy the power source.

The small crack of light suddenly became a far, far larger one, and for a brief second James’ brain went completely blank as he watched the ceiling fall in completely. It careened downward toward him, hitting the walls and breaking up but still remaining solid enough to kill.

Time was up. The door was not going to open any further.

James ripped off his helmet and left it behind, sucking in his stomach and squeezing through the opening in the door. The broken back of his armor turned out to be a godsend, the compromised structure now having enough give for him to force himself through. He fell through to the other side and curled up, covering his now-unprotected face and head with his arms as a cacophony of destruction happened just on the other side of the door, dust and debris raining through on him.

He stayed where he was, panting heavily, hardly believing he was still alive as he slowly sat up. He squinted through the cloud of dirt, at the disturbing amount of sunlight visible in the base of a shaft that was several floors down under even the base of the canyon it was in.

A low whine sounded a warning, and sunlight glinted off of something on the wall up above.

A striker was moving down the shaft.

James cursed and struggled to his feet, wavering slightly from the lightheadedness his near-death experience had caused. There wasn’t much time before the striker finished surveying the area and a Galra soldier realised they’d need to disembark and come this way to find the atmospheric membrane’s power source.

He just had to get to it before they did.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Oh! Oh!” Adam’s voice came over the comm, sounding so painfully offended. Pidge couldn’t see him from here, but she knew Blue was dancing around her in the sky, trying to help cover the smaller Lion while Yellow did the same for Red. “Oh, how _dare_ you!?”

It was Blue and Green against one mech and Yellow and Red against another. Keith was trying to fight the third alone, with Black’s greater bulk and power putting him almost on the same footing as the other two groups. But even with all three mechs being covered equally, the Paladins were not doing very well keeping their footing.

Red went pinwheeling past her viewscreen suddenly, the fact that she was flying out of control reinforced by the way Lance was screaming what were obviously obscenities in Spanish. Yellow darted past to try and save her from cratering in the desert, and Pidge suddenly found her view of the world flipped upside down.

A mech flew by, leaving a light trail as its energy blade lashed through the sky right where she’d been only a second ago.

“Sorry,” Adam grunted as Blue released Green and moved back into Pidge’s line of sight. “Didn’t have time to tell you to move.”

“It’s okay,” Pidge said breathlessly, opening fire on the back of the mech, careful to aim for where it wouldn’t be able to absorb her attack. “Whatever we’ve got to do at this point. Lance, are you okay?”

Before he could answer, two mechs came at them all again, forcing the four Lions to split.

“They’re fighting dirty!” Lance exclaimed. “Dirtier than usual! It’s like they all hone in on whoever’s too close together to break us up!”

“They know we can’t form Voltron if we can’t get close enough,” Keith grumbled, followed by a loud “ow!” as Black took a glancing blow and was sent skidding across the desert. “But at least this means they don’t know we can’t do it anyway.”

“We don’t know we can’t do it, we can’t get close enough to try,” Hunk answered. “The only plus side to this is that they’re spending so much time trying to keep us apart they haven’t been able to completely flatten the city.”

“I think they’re trying to wear us down,” Pidge frowned. “If they keep us fighting long enough we’ll use down our energy reserves, then they don’t have to worry about us forming Voltron because the Lions will be too drained. They’ll be free to go on a rampage at that point.”

“Pidge is right,” Keith agreed. “They’re playing with us. We already know they have so much more firepower than they’re using on us right now, but all they’re doing is bashing us around.”

“They’re moving a lot easier than they were before, too,” Hunk pointed out. “Faster, more coordinated. I don’t think these are beginners like Natille and Haran. They’re even better than Ariella was.”

“That’s not great, considering Ariella kicked all of our buts,” Lance complained.

They had been instinctively drifting back together, and the three mechs now converged and came at them again, forcing them to scatter. This time Pidge didn’t move fast enough, one of them caught Green’s tail and slammed her down into the ground. Pidge gave an angry squawk and twisted Green back around on her attacker, latching teeth onto the offending arm.

The Lion’s jaws creaked downward with hundreds of tons of force, denting the metal they held slightly. The mech yanked back, pulling her along and trying to flip her over to slam her into the ground again.

Blue came from behind, latching onto the mech’s shoulder, but was unable to get good enough grip to hang on. Their attacker spun suddenly, sending them both flying.

“We need to come up with a plan, and soon!” Adam urged. “Particle barrier will be going up in one minute. At that point we have to be ready to go on the offensive instead of just distracting.”

“I thought we were on the offensive!” Hunk lamented. He let out a pained gurgle as Yellow was slammed into something hard, out of Pidge’s field of view.

“We need to find some kind of advantage,” she complained. “A weakness we can exploit, a pattern in their attacks we can identify, anything that can help us predict what they’re going to do and how to counter.”

Black flew across Pidge’s viewscreen, slamming into a cliff so hard he broke partially through, causing the rest to collapse down on him. She sucked in a breath, holding it until she saw the largest Lion beginning to stir and get back up.

“Has anyone tried asking them politely if they’d announce their moves before they make them?” Keith quipped irritably.

Pidge started to move toward him, and the others apparently all had the same idea. The four standing Lions joined up to form a wall between the mechs and Black, as Keith struggled to pry himself out of the mess.

Suddenly, the far left viewscreen began to flicker. It was where the comm’s video feeds usually were when the Paladins all spoke face to face, now clear so that she was able to see the battlefield. Images popped up there, but not from the other three Lions. Two young men and one young woman, barely nineteen or twenty, all with sunken in eyes and emaciated faces. The marks that had once resembled Allura’s and Lance’s now ran down their faces like scars, mutated by constant exposure to quintessence.

There was no mistaking it, these three Alteans were lost. They were druids now, their bodies eaten away by the things Honerva was implanting in those who were gifted.

“Kappa to the right,” the girl instructed. Monotone, flat, as if whatever drove her body right now was unaware that living voices varied in tone and pitch. The Lion’s translators tried to interject some differences into the words to make it sound more like the English she was translating it to, but it still sounded frighteningly hollow. “Iota to the left.”

“Um,” Hunk was the first one to speak.

“Holy crow, Keith,” Lance exclaimed, ducking as the mech who had been ordered to go left did so, coming right at him. “Good job! Now ask them if they’ll stop attacking!”

“I didn’t do it!” Keith declared as Black finally got free and rose back into the air. “I wish I did!”

“It’s a reflected broadcast!” Pidge announced, running her scanners as Green quickly followed Red’s lead and darted out of the way. “They’re not broadcasting directly to us, I don’t think they know we can hear them! And I’m pretty sure that means it’s only one way and they can’t hear us!”

“So somebody’s tuned into their signals and is forwarding them?” Hunk asked. “What do we even have that can do that?”

The mechs paused in their attack then, turning as one toward the Garrison base. At first Pidge wasn’t sure what they were planning, since none of them had said anything, but then she saw what had caught their attention. The doors of the Atlas hangar were sliding open, leaving the still-unprotected base with a gaping opening leading right into its heart.

On the viewscreen, the girl smirked.

“Hold them there,” she commanded.

The two boys moved their mechs in closer, blocking any of the Lions from getting past. Pidge was calculating a route around them without getting hit but the mech moved fast, flitting over to hover over the base.

Its weapon glimmered, shifting shape from the blade it had been holding to a cannon. Just like the bayards, it appeared Honerva was sparing no upgrades.

“No!” Pidge heard some of the others cry out, and maybe she had called out too. She wasn’t entirely sure in her panic as she watched the mech aim its weapon down into the place where so many would now be sheltering in place.

It never got to fire. Something shot out of the hangar so fast it was only a blur, catching the mech and dragging it upward as it passed. Both of them hit open sky just as the base’s particle barrier went up, arcing up high to come shooting back downward and into the open desert.

A fourth mech. The one that had been turned over unscathed by Haran, from its markings. A fourth feed joined the other three as its pilot addressed the others, parroted over to the Paladins by the repeater but not aimed at them.

Kuro.

“Badu ini,” he said harshly. “Ora ini, ma kori-le sa tulor.”

Pidge glanced up at her comm settings, but found that her translators were intact. The language he spoke wasn’t one that translated easily or clearly to English for her and the program couldn’t do it in real time. Instead a readout came after, a written translation that was choppy and difficult.

_This day no. All days no, of me if can it to say._

“Ra korini sa tulor,” the woman replied angrily.

_You can no it to say._

They were speaking something the Lions had no experience translating into English. Given time the translation system would learn and evolve, but with just those few phrases it sounded clunky and strange. The question was what language anybody could be speaking now that the Lions wouldn’t already have in their databases.

The woman, partially pinned to the ground, fought against Kuro’s hold and brought the cannon up to aim at his mech’s head. Kuro grabbed it at the last minute, pulling it downward as she fired and letting the attack hit the absorption core in his chest. He wrenched the cannon out of her hands and slammed it down into the unprotected face.

It all happened so fast, the other two druids took a moment to comprehend and react. By the time they did, Kuro was pulling away and moving back. His mech moved exactly the way he did, smoothly and naturally the same way they moved for the druids, easily ducking and dodging their attacks as he lured them away.

But then, Kuro was a druid. They knew that now, after his performance out on the airfield. His very disturbing performance, that had left twenty or so hardened soldiers little more than blubbering puddles of ranting madness.

That was something they’d have to come back to later though, if they all survived this. For now, every bit of help they could get was welcome.

Pidge felt a familiar pull and her eyes dropped down to her console. The lighting in her cockpit was beginning to shift, dimming as her viewscreen changed. It split in half, giving her a view of the world from the Black Lion’s perspective in addition to her own. It was an automatic uplink that happened, allowing the arms and legs to view their opponent clearly from the torso point of view, instead of seeing only flailing landscape as they moved.

She looked around, and saw that the five of them had drifted closer together while trying to process what was going on.

“Hey guys?” She called their attention. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“Pretty sure I am,” Lance answered. “And I don’t think we’re going to get another chance.”

“Go?” Hunk asked.

“Go,” Keith ordered firmly.

Pidge immediately pushed on her accelerator, aiming Green upward. Around her the other four lifted off as well, with Blue keeping pace surprisingly well despite Adam’s inexperience. But all of the Lions had helped them learn how to do this in the first place, so she supposed there was no reason Blue wouldn’t help Adam if he let her.

She held her breath, waiting to be slammed into, watching the readouts on her screen. She felt the vibrations as Green started to alchemically shift, and one by one new readouts were added to hers as the sensors and controls of each Lion connected to form one artificial nervous system. It was a bit rockier than previous joinings, but with one new pilot and one who had been having trouble recently, the fact that it happened at all was a miracle.

“YES!” Hunk exclaimed as Pidge saw the full mech diagram come up in the corner of her screen, transmitting a report of full power, no joining errors, and good health of all pilots. Lance let out a whoop of celebration as well, as they dropped back down to the surface and came to a gentle landing on the sand. “Congrats, Adam! You’re a leg!”

“Good,” Adam replied. “Cause we’re about to get punched in the face.”

“Oh, crap!” Keith hissed just as Pidge saw the mech looming up in their view.

“SHIELD!” She yelled on instinct, already knowing that was what he would ask for. She threw the switch and pulled the shield from their back, throwing it up just in time to block the oncoming mech’s fist from slamming directly into Keith’s cockpit.

A warning went up that the shield’s sensors were picking up impact pressure, but the hit didn’t push them back nearly as much as she’d expected. Voltron’s mech diagram lit up to show that power was being expended by the Yellow and Blue Lions as they dug in, countering the blow with their own force.

“That should have thrown us back,” Lance noticed it to. “Why didn’t it throw us back?”

“Maybe these ones are weaker than the others,” Keith suggested. “But that doesn’t make any sense, they were batting us around like flies a few minutes ago. And Honerva wouldn’t make second generation mechs weaker than first generation ones.”

“All the original Paladins are back where they’re supposed to be,” Pidge pointed out. “I don’t think Allura was as in tune with Blue as her actual pilot, and I don’t think she was as in tune with us.”

“Awesome,” Hunk quipped. “Adam’s giving us a boost with the power of friendship.”

“I barely tolerate any of you,” Adam informed him. “I would sell you all to pirates for less than two dollars.”

Blue’s power output reading rose suddenly. She went from bracing the rest of them to slamming a knee into the assaulting mech’s gut area, sending it stumbling back. Then she settled back to the ground, this time forward of Yellow, bracing them again for Pidge to block the next blow.

It felt so effortless. Almost like she could feel Blue and Yellow shifting like they were her own legs, feel Red move to join Green like it was her own two arms holding the shield in place. Piloting Voltron had felt like this before, but never to this extent. This felt natural, like they had been doing it for decades instead of just a few years.

Without saying a word, she and Lance quickly raised the shield, bringing the bottom point down on the top of the mech’s head. Again, from the side, then bringing it up to slam its chin. It stumbled back, not having any extra power to throw back because they had yet to actually fire anything for it to absorb.

It was nice, but that honeymoon didn’t last. There were still three mechs against two, and Kuro had been facing off with two on his own. He went flying past, hitting the ground hard and tumbling across the stretch of open desert. Sand kicked up into clouds from the impact and Pidge glanced over at the repeater signal.

Kuro didn’t look so great. What he’d done out on the airfield had obviously tired him, and this looked like it was doing worse. His nose was bleeding again, heavier than it had been before, and there was a faint trickle of blood starting at the corner of his mouth.

“Guys, I don’t think we have long,” she warned. “Kuro’s life signs aren’t good, we need to even the odds fast.”

Up above, there was a flash of light in the sky. When Pidge had seen it before it had made her feel ill, but now she could have jumped up and down in celebration. The shield was coming back up online, satellite by satellite, the net beginning to reconnect. It wasn’t necessarily the best news, but it meant that no more enemies would be able to get through and join these three.

Now they just needed to survive what was already here. If they could figure out how.


	11. Chapter 11

The Atlas and cruiser were very large targets, almost impossible to miss. Three out of the five shots the ships above had taken at them had hit, and Shiro looked at the damage reports that ran across his console screen grimly.

His eyes flicked back and forth between his screen and the bridge’s viewscreen, watching as the last trickle of Alteans struggled out of the colony. He knew he might possibly be put in the position of deciding it was necessary to leave innocent people to die to save the rest, but he hoped against hope that wasn’t the case.

“Sam, where are we?” He asked, pulling his eyes away, to his comm link.

“Just about ready,” Sam replied, not interrupting what he was doing to look at him. “The crystal is wired, we’re just waiting for enough power to flood the reservoirs. Twenty seconds and we’re good to go.”

Shiro absently chewed the inside of his lip and turned his gaze back to the viewscreens. A woman who looked to be about Coran’s age came out of the building and ran for the cruiser. Nobody was behind her.

“Ten seconds.”

The ground shook as another round was fired above them, going wide thanks to one of the girls in the Sinclines diverting the attack. It was getting so bad out there he could no longer tell the difference between their strikers and the enemy’s, and had to rely on the info feed coming in from the Altean cruiser to identify their own people.

“Five seconds.”

One of the outlines on the feed blinked a few times, then went dark to signal that a striker had been destroyed. A lifeline in the grid over it went flat and he looked over, holding his breath.

Not one of his pilots. He felt guilty for being relieved, an Altean woman had just given her life to try and protect these ships. But if he didn’t compartmentalize between his people and the rest he knew the inevitable losses would drive him mad.

“Full power,” Sam announced. “Ready to raise the shields on your command.”

Shiro remained silent and looked back at the viewscreen. He felt the impact as a striker’s shot made contact with the hull.

“Shiro, we need to raise the shields,” Coran said urgently. “So far it’s been striker fire, but those cruisers are moving in close enough to hit us.”

He kept watching the viewscreen, his nails digging into the surface of his console as he gripped the edge. He knew it was time to make the call, but he still didn’t do it.

“Shiro?” Sam asked.

On the screen, the doors of the colony building flew open. Lotor appeared, leading a man who was carrying a young woman. She lay weakly in his arms, probably only just finally succumbing to the disease that had been ravaging the colony’s halls.

The small group sprinted across the open air and Shiro watched them like a hawk. Lotor slowly fell behind a bit to bring up the rear, making himself the last one to safety in case the two he accompanied stumbled or needed help.

“Shields up!” Shiro commanded, the second Lotor crossed into the shadow of the Atlas. The viewscreen flashed orange as the ship’s particle barrier went up, sheltering both the Atlas and the cruiser next to it in place.

He watched the readouts as a Galran cruisers came into distance and their strikes started to land. The impact points came up on his info screen, but the shield held true. But how long it would stand up to the onslaught was the question…every hit drained the balmera crystal, and once enough of those ships got close and started firing it was only a matter of time before they lost their only defense.

Coran locked the shield controls to the bridge so that only the Captain could take them down, then turned his seat around to look at Shiro. With everyone out there fighting—and Nikolaev sick—they were the only two on the quiet bridge.

“What now?” Coran asked. “The barrier won’t last forever.”

“I know,” Shiro replied, careful not to snap at him in his own frustration. “Believe me, I know.”

He leaned against his console, running through all of the possibilities. The Atlas’ new teludav was ignited by Allura’s pre-charged jump crystals, but the primary power source was still the ship. Unlike the Castle of Lions, which had been equipped with a specialty engine and generator that took up almost a quarter of the ship’s space, the Atlas pulled its power directly from whatever source was plugged into it.

One crystal just wasn’t enough without an accompanying generator. They’d need the other two, which were hooked into the colony and too far away from the shielded ships to be reached. Not to mention their size, which would require several people to handle and would make them very conspicuous.

They could drop the shields and use that power to take off, but the chance of success was pretty much zero. With so many enemy ships up there, they’d be shot out of the sky immediately after taking off.

“I don’t think the Atlas is getting out of this unscathed,” Shiro admitted. “What’s the capacity for a Galra cruiser? Will Lotor’s ship hold both his people and ours?”

“That cruiser won’t be able to get away,” Coran pointed out. “Even if it gets out of orbit, it can’t go any faster than all those other ships.”

“The Lorelia will have to launch first,” Shiro replied. “It’s a runner, it can get past those ships. It also has a teludav of its own, it can open a wormhole for the cruiser just like we did to get here. Even adding in the time it would take for her to recharge, they’ll still be three wormholes away from here by the time this fleet catches up to the first.”

“It could work,” Coran supposed. “What about the Atlas?”

“With no crew, we can kill the life support and shield. Hug the cruiser, try to stay under its shield. It’s not as strong as a particle barrier, but it should hold for the few minutes we’ll need and keep us all protected through the first wormhole. Then we can divert all power to the engines.”

“That’s going to burn out the crystal,” Coran mused. “We’d have to hide the Atlas somewhere after the first wormhole jump. Tuck it away on a moon somewhere we can come back to, cross our fingers the Galra don’t find it first.”

“Our biggest concern is how long it would take to get everyone evac—”

The floor jolted underneath of them, sending them both crashing to the ground. Shiro grabbed the edge of the dais as the world tilted, keeping himself from rolling halfway across the bridge. It took a minute for the shaking to settle, and when it did the room was on a forty-five-degree angle.

“What the hell just happened?”

“Galra fire collapsed a lava tube under us,” Coran answered, struggling back into his seat as best he could to run the sensors. “Looks like it’s another section of the same one that collapsed under the colony!”

The viewscreen showed a clear image of the world outside now, the cavernous tube partially collapsed in on itself, leaving them precariously at the edge of a deep hole. The cruiser was on the other side, similarly tilted, and there was nothing but open space between them. The two ships were now touching at the tops, the equal pressure probably the only thing keeping them from collapsing into the open lava tube.

“So much for evacuating the Atlas to the cruiser,” Coran grumbled. “Time for another plan.”

Shiro’s stomach sank as he took a good look at the area. The tube was now collapsed all the way from the colony to about a mile to the east, crossing it without stepping outside the particle barrier impossible. Down on his console, a warning flashed that the shield was taking heavy fire and that the current power levels could only sustain it for about five hours…if the attacks stayed constant. It was stronger than the Castle of Lions’ barrier thanks to Allura’s and Lotor’s tweaking, but it would still give out eventually.

“Atlas crew and passengers,” Shiro hit his comm, opening all channels between the two ships. “Please remain stationery in your current sections until ordered otherwise. If any patients were displaced by our tilt, render aid in a slow, careful fashion.”

He closed the lines and called directly over to the cruiser.

“Lotor, what’s your status?”

There was no response for a moment, then Lotor came up on the comm. He was panting a bit, looking like he’d had to fight his way across the hold, and was replying from the Lorelia’s empty bridge for privacy.

“Messy,” he replied. “The main hold was acting as a triage center…it doesn’t look like our tilt is as bad as yours, but it’s certainly putting a crimp in our efforts. Nobody was hurt, at least.”

“Good. Our particle barrier says it can run for about five hours with just the balmera crystal, what about the cruiser?”

“If we have to take over after your power dies, we can probably buy another ten vargas,” Lotor answered. “That’s if everything stays as it is, and only because this was a faction ship that had its shields adjusted against other cruisers. If the situation changes—and I’m sure it will—that will probably drop to anywhere between one and three vargas.”

So they had at least eight hours at the status quo. That would drop sharply once more ships showed up, which would undoubtedly happen. At this point, there was only one way forward that he could see.

“I could go down into the lava tubes,” Shiro suggested. “The Atlas needs those other two crystals to fly, maybe I could get to them underground.”

“I cannot begin to describe how terrible of an idea that is,” Coran offered.

“Coran is right,” Lotor replied. “It would be a good idea under other circumstances, but the constant laserfire will eventually collapse them further. When that happens, you’ll either be killed underground or trapped outside the particle barrier.”

“Well I can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Shiro replied.

“Nothing is exactly what you have to do,” Lotor countered. “It’s agonizing and it’s stressful, but staying back and remaining safe is part of being a leader. You’re the Captain of a ship and the commanding officer over thousands of military personnel, not a foot soldier. All of these people are relying on you to be watching the big picture and moving them where they need to be. They cannot do their jobs effectively if you’re gallivanting around outside of the shield instead of being at your post doing yours.”

Shiro didn’t like it, but Lotor was right. He felt like he needed to be out there doing something, but the reality was that this was where he needed to be. He had accepted this position, and that meant he had to be here to make decisions and try to work toward the best possible outcome. Which, unfortunately, seemed impossible right now.”

“The big picture is that there’s nothing we can do,” Shiro replied. “Nothing except call back the strikers before we lose any more pilots and leave Sincline up there to fight while we just sit here.”

“Then just sit here is what we will do,” Lotor replied. He wasn’t at ease, Shiro could see that, but he was calm. Undoubtedly, ten thousand years’ worth of being a witness to battles had given him an insight Shiro was too new at this to have. “Take a breath, remain calm. Stay at your post, and go over what you know. Watch for changes, be ready to adjust. We may sit here for a varga, we may sit here for three, but something will happen and we need to be waiting and ready to act on it. Sincline will do its job, the medics will do theirs and, if luck is with us, taking the time to think will present us with a course of action that isn’t obvious to us yet.”

Shiro sighed and lowered himself into Curtis’ empty seat, looking up at the viewscreens and radars. On screen, Lotor turned to look back as somebody came onto the bridge. As he moved, Shiro could see it was Camille. He hadn’t heard the bridge door open, so Lotor must have left it ajar.

“Sir, let me launch the Lorelia,” she requested.

“Why?” Lotor asked. “You’ll be useless out there, she has no weapons.”

“Not to fight, to find a balmera,” Camille replied. “The Atlas needs two more Battleship Class crystals to function at top form, yes? Getting the ones hooked to the colony disassembled and brought back is impossible to do under the rain of fire. But if I can get this ship out of orbit we can wormhole a safe distance and work without the threat, then return to the Atlas’ docking bay instead of this one to unload.”

Lotor inhaled slowly and looked back at Shiro, and Shiro knew what he was thinking. He did not want to send this girl out into more danger when it had finally seemed like their children were safe. But the Lorelia had been built under Honerva’s tenure, and Camille and her young crew were the ones who knew how to fly her best under pressure.

“Hira,” Lotor finally gave in, activating another comm line. “Report to the Lorelia with three of your best soldiers, immediately.”

“Coran should go too,” Shiro suggested.

“Coran should what?” Coran asked, looking up from what he was doing with surprise. Shiro muted the comm lines and got up, carefully making his way along the sharply angled floor to lean against the console next to him.

“These Alteans are young,” he said reasonably. “You’re not just some console jockey, Coran, you’re an advisor to royalty. You’ve traveled the universe with King Alfor, and with us, and you know how to extract a balmera crystal safely. It’s not right for me to tie you down here, not now. Your people need you and all that zany wisdom you’ve got locked in that head of yours. If those kids are going to pull this off, you’re the one who’s going to bring them back safely.”

Coran blinked, then stood up to his full height, giving a salute.

“We’ll be back in less than two vargas,” he promised.

“I believe you,” Shiro answered, returning the salute. “Now get out there and be a hero, it’s what you do best.”

Coran fought his way across the tilted floor to the doors, and Shiro took up his station as he left. He unmuted the comm lines.

“Coran will be over as soon as he changes into away armor. The boosters will get him across the lava tube.”

Lotor bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement and rose, motioning for Camille to take command of the runner.

“Acxa,” he commanded. “Call back all strikers, get our pilots back under the shields. Tell the landing bays to be ready to do some quick repairs, and advise any Atlas pilots to remain aboard in preparation for when we need them to relaunch.”

“_Yes, sir._”

“I’m heading up to the bridge,” he told everyone. “If the Ancients are watching over us, may nothing else explode before I get there.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Lotor deactivated the comm line, looking at Camille sternly as he turned away from the consoles.

“As for you…don’t let me catch you eavesdropping on any of my conversations again,” he warned.

“Of course,” her words acquiesced, but her tone said she’d damn well do whatever she felt needed to be done and knew no authority.

He couldn’t really blame her. She had come of age in a time when so many Altean children had been left to fend for themselves under Honerva’s thumb. No one had ever come to save her, she and her small crew had fought to keep their wits about them then had joined up with strangers to become the rescuers. There was very little authority he had to exercise over her until he finally did something to earn it.

“Lotor!”

A voice called to him as he made his way off the ship, being careful to keep his balance on the angled floor. He looked up to find one of the ambassadors who had been representing the Alteans on Earth, ducking and weaving through busy medics as she made her way over.

“This was left for you,” she said breathlessly as she reached him, holding up a small chip. “By Mr. Kurogane. He gave it to me when he boarded the ship and told me to give it to you once he was gone.”

“Did he?” Lotor took the little chip from her curiously. “But then he stayed on Earth?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “But since he was planning on going off on his own, I imagine he had something to say that he didn’t intend to be around for.”

Now that was curious. Kuro didn’t strike Lotor as being overly sentimental; he was abrupt and honest bordering on rude, usually direct about his feelings, and not a fan of coddling people. To outside eyes he would seem to be somewhat of an asshole, but the reality was that he was a man who’d been through some hard times and refused to exhaust himself by spending unnecessary energy on those who hadn’t proved they deserved it.

What he could possibly have to say was a mystery. Somehow, Lotor doubted it was a heartwarming “thank you.”

He headed for the comm unit on the wall and called up to the bridge, letting Acxa know he would be a little bit and that she was in charge. The Lorelia would be leaving soon and would need cooperation between the cruiser and the Atlas to lift the lower shields enough for her to go, and if anything went wrong he should be called. Then he left the crowds, slipping out into the hallway and taking a lift up to the highest levels of the ship.

He got out on the officers’ floor and went to his quarters. It was the only place he knew he would have privacy, and he definitely wanted that until he knew what it was Kuro had to say.

Lotor locked his door and did one more check of the cruiser’s status from his computer, watching until the Lorelia took off and left the protection of the shield. He waited until the cruiser’s scanners registered both the opening and closing of a wormhole, then slid the chip into the port and opened the folder.

Just one single video file. Then it was definitely meant for him, not some drive filled with medical files to pass on to Acxa or something similar.

He opened the video, glancing at the image before hitting play. Kuro was seated in a room in what Lotor assumed was Curtis’ house, and wearing a shirt that was just a little too big for him and obviously not his. The placement of one of his hands said he was recording himself on a laptop, while the other toyed with the dog tags he was wearing. Also very obviously not his.

If the shirt and dog tags weren’t a screaming prediction that he was going to change his mind about leaving, Lotor didn’t know what would be. He hit play and leaned back in his seat as the image started to move.

“_This is going to be fast_,” Kuro said, his now-moving fingers making the dog tags jingle lightly. He seemed to really like things that made light clinking noises. “_I’m just going to assume this made it to Lotor, the Alteans on the Lorelia seem to be pretty trustworthy._”

He blinked and his eyes went black. Lotor had seen him that way before, back when he’d first rescued him from Honerva’s lab. But this time the change went further, black lines beginning to run down from his inner eyes like some kind of poisoned tears. Small marks appeared just under his eyes, like Altean marks, but the corners bled upward in a semicircle around his eyes and ended in sharp hooks. Lotor sat up straighter, intrigued.

“_There are people that live in the quintessence field_,” Kuro said. “_Entire worlds and ecosystems exist there, filled with plants and animals, but there are three intelligent races. The Guardians live deep in the quintessence field itself, there are five of them that came across into this reality and use the Lions as their avatars. The White Lion you encountered in Oriande is one of these as well, he’s currently found a host in Takashi. What they’re doing here I don’t know, but I can tell you they’re not really a threat the same way the things Honerva implants are._

“_The Reapers exist in the Borderlands, a stretch of the quintessence field between the deeper parts and realities like this one. I’ll come back to them in a minute. The third race are the Sentinels. They spend most of their adult lives out here in the realities, in the form of an energy that most mortals can’t sense. They can be seen if they put in the effort to do it, but for the most part they keep to themselves. They return to the quintessence field to form families and raise their young…three of which are currently in the Sincline ships. These Sentinels are juveniles, they were probably separated from their tribes somehow and gravitated to Allura when you took her to test drive the ship. There’s a reason they like her but don’t like you._”

People living in the quintessence field. Races, Kuro called them, and from the sounds of where they lived they probably didn’t mix too much. The very thought was fascinating, and far beyond anything Lotor had assumed about that strange other realm.

“_Everything exists in threes,_” Kuro continued. “_Light, dark, and middle ground. Evil is not a thing, it doesn’t exist. All living things are inherently good, but free will is a very important gift that can lead to poor decisions. No one part of this circle is any less good than the others. You have to remember that fact, because eventually you may be made to feel otherwise._

_“Each race has five phenotypes, corresponding to a particular element. The Guardians practice their elements, Yellows with Earth, Blacks with Air, Reds with Fire, Blues with Water, and Greens with Nature, and the byproducts of those are the elements that gather and condense until they explode outward to create new universes. The Sentinels prod and shape life-giving planets through powerful mechanisms most of us would consider disasters…Turquoise with Flood, Carnelians with Volcano, Jades with Hurricane, Ambers with Earthquake, and Opals with Aurora._

_“The Reapers are different from the other two. Guardians create life, Sentinels maintain it. It’s our job to end it. Not to kill…all life in a universe comes to a natural end, we just clean up the mess. We feed on what’s left when a universe dies, absorbing the last quintessence from it and scattering its ashes. We leave empty space for new universes to be born into. But this means that by our nature, we absorb the life around us, and that makes the others uncomfortable.”_

It was basically Kuro admitting that he was not of this universe. Lotor had begun to suspect as much after they’d come to the conclusion that Honerva was building empty clones to put her otherworldly monsters in, there was simply too much evidence for him not to. Kuro was a clone, he had been rescued from a lab where this kind of thing was undoubtedly being practiced, and Lotor had seen with his own eyes the resemblance he bore to the things they were fighting.

That he claimed to be part of a civilization that lived in the quintessence field, however, was new. But also one of the missing puzzle pieces. Lotor had been wondering why Kuro functioned completely independently if he was the same as the others, and the answer was that he simply wasn’t the same as the others.

“_We’re not made to absorb life itself, that’s just an accidental side effect of circumstance_,” Kuro said dully. “_You’re a strict vegetarian, just like I am. You’ve never said so, but I know it’s because you feel indescribably uncomfortable when you eat in general and it’s at its worst when you have animal products. That’s because you’re not just normally digesting food, your body is absorbing the quintessence from it. When you do that, you’re pulling small increments of life from a planet’s quintessence pool, potentially destroying part of a core. We’re not made to do that, and we don’t like it._”

Kuro’s “we” suddenly became much more personal. Until now Lotor had been intrigued, but now the video had his full attention.

“_Sometimes, a person from the quintessence field crosses over and bonds with a person in a reality_,” Kuro continued, unaware of the face Lotor was sure he was making. “_They give up a lot when that happens, so it doesn’t happen often. That’s also why Honerva is cloning empty shells with no souls. None of the creatures she’s bringing over would ever sacrifice themselves that way, so they need bodies they can drive around without having to fight against a living host’s willpower_.

“_Reapers have five phenotypes just like the others…Tins, Irons, Steels, Bronzes, and Silvers. About ten thousand years ago, the thing that’s taken over Honerva fooled the Black Lion’s pilot into taking it into the quintessence field. While it was there it kidnapped a young Silver cub, which it forced to bond with its host’s dying unborn child to save his life. We think it might have been as a trade, to make Honerva give up fighting and hand over complete control. By we, I mean myself and the larger entity you have living down in the containment lab. He’s a Gold, and one of us._”

Lotor felt dizzy as he realized Kuro was definitely talking about him, feeling his blood drain and his breathing hitch. His heart started pounding in his ears so hard he had to shakily turn up the volume.

“_I know what you probably think of me for dropping this on you in a video after running away. But I already know that you won’t go with me, just like Gold won’t. In all honesty, I’m not supposed to tell you anything. Under ideal circumstances you would figure it out for yourself…you’re so close already. But these aren’t ideal circumstances, and there just isn’t time for you to learn at your own pace. _

“_You’re very powerful, but it comes at a price. If you expend yourself too much, you start to crave quintessence. Until now you’ve had access to it, already pulled from planets and processed until there was no life left in it by Galra energy generation. You need to continue your research into pulling power directly from the quintessence field, being able to do that is what’s going to save you. You can spend some time in places like the Quantum Abyss as well, there’s power there you can absorb to recharge. That’s part of why I’m leaving. I’ve been in this reality for so long I’m exhausted, I need to find somewhere safe where I won’t destroy any cores by trying to survive._

“_Once you finally master this power generation you’re looking for, you’ll have nothing stopping you from unleashing what you are. That’s what has Honerva scared of you. In the beginning, she left you floating in the rift after your fight with Voltron because she wanted to let her Formless destroy you at their leisure…you’d already proven you could unite armies here against her, and that’s the last thing she wants. But Gold found you and protected you, so she went along with Acxa’s suggestion to bring you back so she could get rid of you once and for all._

“_Fortunately, Adam and Lance took you before she had the chance. Now you have to learn what you can do, and fast, before she targets you again. I said before that things come in threes, and that includes quintessence…alchemy is the white side, druidism is the black side, and shamanism is the span of gray in the middle. All your life you’ve been trying to master alchemy and avoiding druidism because you’re afraid you’d follow in her footsteps. You won’t. Power bends to the will of the user, not the other way around. It’s not the power that corrupts, it’s that corrupted people seek power. You have ten thousand years’ worth of knowledge in druidism that you’ve been avoiding, now it’s time for you to use it. It’s your natural alignment, and what you are makes you stronger than anybody Honerva has on her side right now._”

Kuro took a deep breath and sat back in his seat, still playing with the dog tags.

“_Obviously, by the time you get this I’m not here to help anymore. But the Gold will be, and if you listen carefully you _will_ be able to communicate with him to an extent. I’m pretty sure I’ve confused you now, probably scared the hell out of you, and if it makes you feel any better I am at least a tiny bit sorry. But you need to know what you can do…you can swallow planets, drain stars, destroy all life in a system, and you need to know that’s a possibility before you accidentally do it. Practice, be careful, and speak to Gold. He’ll help you more than I could even if I was still there._”

Kuro reached forward, and then the screen went blank as the recording ended. Lotor was left sitting in silence, staring at a black screen, uncertain how to react. After a moment he played the video through again. It was only after his fourth repeat that he came out of his daze and realized he needed to get to the bridge, and made himself pull the chip out of his console and lock it in his desk drawer.

Lotor left the room in a haze, nothing feeling real. He had to consciously make his feet move, it was like part of his brain wanted to shut down all motor activity and devote all of its resources to processing what he’d just seen.

Everything Kuro had said seemed too fantastical to be true, but at the same time fit in far too well with his experience. His distaste for all but the simplest of foods, the change in his mood and energy levels after being exposed to harvested and processed quintessence, the draw of druidism even though he expended so much energy trying to get around it and work alchemy instead.

And he had always had a feeling that he didn’t quite belong, but he had simply attributed it to a mix of being only half-Galra and having such an extensive lifespan when nobody else did. To be told it was because he was something that wasn’t even from this world?

He didn’t know if he could believe that. But there was no way to truly know, not unless they lived to return to Earth and he had a chance to confront Kuro about the message he had forgotten to take back when he’d decided to stay.

Lotor was halfway to the bridge when alarms began to blare, red lights flashing a warning through the halls. He started to run, weaving through crew who were rushing to their stations, cursing how slow the lifts went and the ridiculous distance he had to cross. When he finally arrived and burst into the room, Acxa was barking orders to the Alteans manning the main guns.

“More company,” she told Lotor as he strolled to the Captain’s console, stepping out of his way so he could see. “More cruisers keep arriving, and so far none of them are friendly.”

“If help comes at all it will take time,” Lotor pointed out. “There’s a huge expanse of Faction space between us and the Empire.”

“Help isn’t going to come,” Acxa murmured, dropping her voice so the others couldn’t hear. “No Galra is going to risk their neck for Alteans, not after ten thousand years of propaganda. The only ones who will come are the ones who want to be able to say they helped kill us for good.”

“We were going to die anyway,” Lotor said with brutal honesty. “But if even one Imperial cruiser risks coming here, we might have some kind of chance.”

Acxa shook her head, not feeling the optimism he was trying to push. Lotor understood, he didn’t really expect help to come either. But he had to give the Galra a choice, make them decide if they really wanted things to change or if they preferred they stayed the same. One way or another, from this day forward, no citizen of the Empire could truthfully say they were forced into a direction they didn’t actively choose themselves.

“How long can we hold out?” Acxa asked.

“The Atlas’ particle barrier is based on an upgraded one that was used on their Earth base,” Lotor answered. “They had a solar power grid dedicated to it there, and here the barrier relies entirely on the Atlas’ power source. As long as the balmera holds up, so will the barrier.”

“So, a few vargas,” Acxa calculated. “Then we fall back to the cruiser’s shield, which will buy us a few more at the most. Then we die. So what do we do until then?”

“Wait, watch,” Lotor replied, hating it as much as he knew she did. “Hope something changes that raises our chance of survival.”

* * * * * * * * * *

James never would have thought that when going up against Galra soldiers in an alien base in the pitch dark, he would be the one with the advantage. He had definitely never thought the Galra themselves would have handed him that advantage. Nevertheless here he was, with his prosthetic leg running sonar through the building and guiding him without need for a light.

His back was kind of sore, but since he hadn’t been crushed to death by a falling lift he took that as a win. And he was missing his helmet, which was slightly less of a win since the slow collapse of the power station meant James had gotten beaned in the head a couple times now by falling bits of debris.

He knew where the crystal was, it was just a short hallway away from where he’d taken the lift, but he’d spent the last forty minutes avoiding going near it. The last thing he wanted was to open that door and have the damn thing’s light announce exactly where the station’s power source was.

So he’d been running around in the dark for nearly an hour, stopping only occasionally to tap loudly against something or make a blatantly human noise to keep the two Galra down here with him following. It was harder than it had initially seemed, this final level wasn’t huge and though there were no dead ends it was still tricky to navigate. He was relying on his sonar to tell him exactly where the enemy was, and effectively ruin every plan they came up with to trap him.

James had been hoping he would magically come up with a plan as time went on, but all he was coming up with was a leg cramp. He’d lost his weapon in the fall, and even if he went back it would be buried under the rubble.

He darted around a corner and flattened himself against a wall, holding his breath to stop himself from panting and squeezing his eyes closed as if it wasn’t pitch dark, listening for footsteps. What he heard instead was a crackling noise, then a crash as a chunk of the ceiling fell in down the hall.

Light flooded the narrow passageway from above, the shadows of the ravine walls blocking the direct sun but still leaving it bright enough to illuminate all the way down to where he was standing. He looked up and down at the doors here, knowing his two pursuers would be here any second.

It was all storage closets and maintenance rooms. One was for the heating system, one was for the electrical, one was for the life support. All dead ends, and if he went into anything down here and they decided to start checking, he would be trapped.

His brain screamed for him to pick a direction and run, but he forced himself to be still. He waited for the last reverberations of falling debris to die down and listened, searching for the two soldiers. They were together now, and both coming up toward the corner where he stood in search of the noise.

James bolted down the hall, jumping the pile of fallen metal and cement, throwing himself around the far corner just as he felt the two turn into this hall. This time, instead of stopping and waiting, he made a sprint back toward the fallen lift. The door he wanted was there, still mostly hidden in shadow, and he took a chance at wrenching it open while they were distracted.

The light from the crystal was almost blinding as he slipped inside, carefully closing the door in an attempt to make no sound. He ran quickly to the generator where the crystal sat, checking that his gloves were still intact before sliding open the glass case.

His fingers were only inches away from the crystal when James hesitated. Until now his entire goal had been to lose the two Galra soldiers and get in here, now that he was here it was time to think ahead. Except he was now realizing there was no ahead to think to.

Once he removed this crystal, the scrubbers maintaining the atmospheric membrane would shut down. This planet was smaller than Earth but it was still a good size, and the little bubble of breathable air they had was only about the size of a small city. Once that bubble popped the air would leave, and quickly.

James had no helmet for life support. His armor was cracked open, potentially leaving him open to exposure to solar radiation. He was already feeling the cold, but that would surely get worse. And he had no way to get back to the ships.

But if he left this crystal here, what would happen next would probably be worse. If it fell into the hands of the Galra, the first thing they would do would be weaponize it somehow. James didn’t know exactly how the crystal worked—only the Paladins and Allura did, it was a strongly guarded secret—but he knew it was powerful. If he wanted his planet to keep having a fighting chance against these monsters, he couldn’t let them have it.

Whatever the cost.

Taking a deep breath, James reached for the base where the crystal sat and initiated the shutdown. He kept half his attention on the sonar, mentally urging the system to hurry as the two soldiers began opening doors to check the rooms. They moved away from each other to cover more ground, slowly but steadily narrowing down where he could have gone. It took a few minutes, but as soon as the light of the generator began to fade he pulled the crystal free and knelt down to shove it into a small maintenance compartment in his prosthetic leg.

He knew he didn’t have much time left, he could feel the vibrations of the two Galra coming down the hallway. By now they had checked everywhere else and were moving slowly, probably looking for further doors they might have missed. It was only a matter of time.

James darted around the generator base, throwing himself at the metal rungs protruding from the wall just as someone pushed at the door. The built-in ladder only went up to the ceiling, for doing maintenance on the out-of-reach lighting. Gunfire sounded as the lock was blown off the door, only two feet to his right. It started to slide open slowly, and lights swept the inside.

He held his breath, carefully stretching out his foot on the slight ledge at the top of the doorway, still clinging to the ladder to hold himself up. He remained as quiet as he could, waiting.

The Galra came in, moving slowly. The split up, walking around the generator base, stopping to look at it. His translator was gone with his helmet so he only understood a few of the harsh words, but he knew they were talking about this room being the station’s power source.

Then one of the lights moved, landing directly on him. One of the Galra shouted a warning, and James knew he was screwed if he didn’t move fast.

He dropped down into the doorway, stumbling slightly before dragging himself back to his feet, momentarily frozen as he tried to figure out what to do. If he went back to the lift pit there was another maintenance ladder, but he didn’t know what kind of shape it was in now and he’d probably get shot before he was halfway up.

James made a run back in the direction of the maintenance halls. His momentary lock-up nearly cost him as gunfire hit the wall right where his head had been, and he knew that if he wasn’t quick he wasn’t going to remain as lucky as he had been so far. The hallways were brighter now and he no longer had any advantage.

He headed for the light, knowing it was his only escape. There was no longer any sneaking or tiptoeing, he ran full tilt through the halls and around corners. As he reached the collapsed area he jumped without slowing, grabbing the edge of the opening.

The fragile, cracked section of metal came off in his hand, dropping him back to the floor. It took two more tries before he caught hold of something solid enough to pull himself up, and as he did he found himself in a wind tunnel. A hand grabbed his foot and tried to pull him back down, and he only barely managed to free himself by kicking desperately.

There were only seconds to analyze the changed landscape as he pulled himself up into daylight. The power station lay around him in piles of broken rubble, with barely any trace of what the building had once been remaining. He looked around wildly until he spotted what looked like the last remains of the lift to the top of the ravine, the collapsed chunks of metal and concrete lying in a very unsteady looking ramp halfway up the side of it. The lift tube itself was torn open there, which gave him some hope.

He scrambled across the small field of destruction, the ruins shifting and settling under him, forced to throw himself down flat or behind fallen beams as his pursuers pulled themselves out of the basement and started firing at him. But the uneven terrain and the heavy winds worked against them just as much as they worked against him.

The wind wasn’t the work of any natural storm. He knew it was the air rushing out of the released atmospheric membrane, the oxygen quickly leaving the area now that there was nothing holding it in. By the time he reached the bottom of the lift tube and scrambled through the jagged hole, he could feel the air beginning to grow thin and breathing begin to get harder.

The lift itself had crashed down to the bottom, leaving the way to the top open. Like everything else here it had a maintenance ladder, and he started to climb as quickly as he dared.

James was a strong man, healthy and well-trained. But the attack he dealt with now was the one that burned his lungs, the oxygen bleeding out of the air even as his pumping heart demanded more to fuel its exertion. The way up was not easy, and he knew he was very lucky to have climbed in at the middle instead of the bottom floor.

He was beginning to feel lightheaded as he reached the top, prying the doors open and rolling out as the Galra soldiers finally fought their way to the bottom of the shaft and started firing their weapons. James knew they would catch up to him quickly; Galra had high stamina, and they both had on helmets.

There was no escape here, but that was no longer James’ intent. He wasn’t going to make it back to the Atlas, what he needed was somewhere small to cram himself into and hopefully remain hidden after he died. Romelle knew where he had gone, if their people survived they would come looking when this was all over and eventually track the crystal down and bury him properly.

“I should’ve told Mom that Dump Truck gets a powdered donut on holidays,” he panted, forcing himself to jog in the direction of the least flat section of land. “She’s gonna be so pissed when she doesn’t get her Christmas treat.”

Laserfire hit the ground in front of him, causing a dip in the earth that caught his foot and tripped him up. Hit the ground and rolled once, stumbling and falling back down when he tried to get up. He was gasping, trying to pull in air that wasn’t there and getting only a tiny fraction of what he needed. His body gave up without his permission, letting him fall back on the ground and refusing to try to get up.

He saw only open sky above him for a moment, then the almost bored face of a female Galra soldier standing over him. James prayed that once they killed him they decided to just leave his body here, with his prosthetic’s precious cargo untouched. He didn’t even try to fight as the gun came into view, the telltale whine of it charging up to fire sounding in his ears.

Something glinted in the sunlight over the Galra’s head, flashing briefly before it came down and caught her around the neck. Long and thin, it pulled tight against the soft fabric where no armor could effectively be placed, crushing the windpipe and making her drop her gun. James could only wince as the weapon nicked the side of his head when it fell, using all the energy he had left to turn his head slightly to try and see what was going on.

The Galra was forced to turn around, someone in Atlas combat armor coming into view. James could see her body start to jump as the rapid fire of her partner hit her instead of the human now using her as a shield. The Atlas soldier dropped down with the body, grabbing the dropped gun and settling into a kneel to begin firing back.

The firefight didn’t last long. James only knew that because he was still conscious when it ended, enough realize when the Galran helmet was practically slammed onto his head and held into place. Cool, breathable air flooded the small chamber, and for the first time in his life James was overjoyed at the faint, chemical smell of artificial life support.

“Come on, you need to get up,” a hoarse, tired voice said. “This helmet isn’t fit to your armor properly, the air won’t stay in there long.”

_Nikolaev_.

“Did I die?” James asked groggily, coughing as the air worked its way thoroughly into his lungs. “You’re handcuffed half-dead in the medical bay on the Atlas.”

Nikolaev lifted an arm for him to see. The thin strand James had seen him use to choke the soldier was the foot-long chain from the cuffs, still attached to his wrist.

“I’m half-dead out in an open field with Galra strikers everywhere,” he corrected weakly, helping James sit up. “And I have a really bad headache and my throat really hurts, so we _really_ need to go. Where’s their transport?”

“How did you get here?” James asked groggily, looking around. “Can’t we get back the same…oh.”

Down at the bottom of the hill they sat on was what was left of one of the Atlas’ ATVs. It was smoking, hit hard by enemy fire.

“All our pilots got called back to the cruiser when shields went up a few minutes ago,” Nikolaev panted, hauling James up to his feet. “Once they weren’t distracted, they spotted it and opened fire. It still runs but it will be slow…if we can get it down into the lava tubes we can travel at a safe pace without getting shot at, but I’d rather get back fast. These two, where’s their transport?”

“Back down in the ravine,” James grunted, forcing himself to walk mostly under his own power. His adrenaline was starting to wane, and now he could feel that he had been hit by the gunfire more than once. “You can probably see it from the edge, there’s a wide-open main shaft in the middle. They flew a striker down there. But it’s useless…it’s not one of the ones the Alteans reprogrammed, it’s not going to work without a Galra pilot.”

“Uh huh,” Nikolaev answered, hauling him toward the edge of the ravine. “Where?”

At this point, James just wanted to get somewhere safe and he didn’t care where. The membrane was down, the power station was destroyed. Nikolaev was still a very sick man and he was beaten to hell and in no fighting condition. Hiding down in the rubble for a bit to recover wasn’t a terrible idea.

“There,” he pointed to the large opening in the middle of the crumbled building. The thick walls of the maintenance elevator shaft were cracked in some spots, but still standing. “At the bottom of that.”

“Okay. Hold on.”

Nikolaev grabbed the back of the belt harness on his armor, and James put an arm around his shoulders just as Niko threw them both off the edge and hit his boosters. The combat armor ones were powerful, meant to help travel long distances while the pilot ones were mostly meant just to break falls. James’ own were no longer working after being wrecked earlier, but Nikolaev’s got them slowly to their destination.

The other man was right. The lack of a correct seal was letting a lot of the air out of this helmet, and he could feel his life support beginning to thin again. They reached the bottom of the shaft and both leaned back against the wall, James to slow his breathing and conserve air and Nikolaev to have a painful-sounding coughing fit.

“Why are you even out here?” James asked, wincing at the noise. He could practically feel the jagged pain in his own throat with each cough. “You need to be in the medical bay.”

“I knew as soon as I heard you say you were coming here that you weren’t going to get back on your own,” Nikolaev answered. “Not with this place being a main target. Sit still, conserve air. I’ll be back.”

James leaned back against the wall and pressed the helmet down, trying to keep the best seal he could while Nikolaev picked his way over to the striker. He disappeared around to the other side and James closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

He didn’t know how many more miracles were going to happen to keep him alive, but he had just experienced another one. If he made it home, he was going to go to Christmas mass this year.

There was a loud hissing sound, and he opened his eyes to find Nikolaev appearing around the front of the striker.

“Come on,” he beckoned. “Get in here.”

“Son of a bitch,” James marveled, fighting his way around the ship to get to the open outer airlock. “How did you get it open?”

“Trade secret,” Nikolaev answered, hitting some buttons. “Sit down and rest a minute while I look at this thing.”

The outer lock closed and the inner lock opened, and James felt the rush of air from a stable life support system. He pulled off the helmet as they moved inside, letting himself fall down to sit on the floor immediately.

The flood of warmth that enveloped him reminded him that he had just narrowly missed another danger: he had gone numb to the frigid temperatures of the planet’s unwarmed surface, his torn armor no longer providing the proper insulation. He hadn’t even been aware of just how cold he’d become until he felt the pins and needles start in his limbs and digits.

The painful feeling was then joined by another sensation, the gentle vibration of the ship powering up. Nikolaev sat up to look at him over the back of the pilot seat he’d taken.

“It’s working,” he pointed out needlessly.

“How is it working!?” James demanded, giving up on walking and crawling over to pull himself into the second seat. “This shouldn’t work! How is it working?”

“Trade secret,” Nikolaev repeated.

“KFC’s eleven herbs and spices are a trade secret,” James shot back. “Hotwiring Galra-tuned tech on the fly is fucking magic.”

“Okay, then it’s magic,” Nikolaev croaked, starting their ascent upward out of the shaft. “Did I mention my head hurts? And I think I coughed up blood in my helmet, do you mind if we argue later?”

Something wasn’t sitting right, but James didn’t know if it was just the lack of oxygen messing with his perceptions. He could see the free end of the handcuffs hanging down, something metal still jammed in the lock. They were admittedly kind of old school, the sort of thing used just as a safeguard against someone who wasn’t thought of as a big escape risk.

The question was why Shiro had believed Nikolaev needed to be cuffed in the first place.

Niko knew why he’d come out here, he’d obviously overheard his whole conversation with Romelle. James wondered now if his interest was purely in saving him, or if it was in getting his hands on the crystal. Until he knew why Shiro thought he couldn’t be trusted, James couldn’t make any assumptions.

“_Striker Fourteen, we have a smoking ground vehicle in the theta quadrant_,” the comm suddenly blared, startling them both as the secondary backup translator on Nikolaev’s arm kicked in on speaker mode, indicating that Niko’s primary one either wasn’t on or was broken. “_Verify the target you called in has been neutralized, the thing might still be working and it might provide an escape_.”

“Who’s Striker Fourteen?” James whispered, looking wildly around the cockpit for a ship designation. “Are we Striker Fourteen?”

“Well, they’re obviously calling our line, so there’s a pretty good chance,” Nikolaev answered. “Any chance you speak Galra? I can try to answer, but they always think I have a weird accent.”

“_Striker Fourteen, you plan to answer_?” The caller said gruffly.

“_Just force it through_,” A grumpier voice said from somewhere nearby. “_I’m so tired of these two idiots not paying attention_.”

“Shit,” James hissed as the comm started to activate remotely.

“Duck!” Nikolaev advised, dropping down.

They both scurried back behind their seats, pulling up their knees and sitting as still as possible. James held his breath, trying not to move his arms in case they were even slightly noticeable around the edges of his cover.

For a moment there was silence, then someone on the other end of the call sucked in an irritated breath.

“_How many times do I have to tell these grunts that if they want to keep their ships secure from being boarded they have to use the full lockdown procedures?_” The angrier voice muttered. “_We’re in the middle of a fight, and they’re going to kill their crystal by putting it on hover mode instead? Screw them, bring it in remotely. Let them beg for a ride back to the cruiser when they come back and find it gone_.”

“_Yes, sir._”

The ship began to shake as someone up on the cruiser took over the controls, setting the striker on a course to dock. After a minute or so James slowly peeked around the side of his seat and found that the communications line had been closed.

“We’re on our way up to a cruiser,” he noted.

“Sounds like it,” Nikolaev agreed.

“What do we do about it?”

“Well, I could cough on them, but I think biological warfare is still considered a war crime.”

James groaned and leaned back against the seat, resting his head in his hands. Neither he nor Nikolaev were in any condition to still be fighting at this point, and here they were on their way to being dropped in the middle of a Galra fleet.

Maybe he had been a little too quick to consider his rescue a miracle after all.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Okay, it’s a lot harder than it should be to fight without actually shooting anyone,” Hunk complained, bringing Yellow down to brace against the ground, skidding across the desert as they recovered from the kick do the chest. “How is it that so many of our weapons are guns?”

“They’re designed for fighting in space,” Lance replied. “Of course they’re going to be set up for long distance attack power, there aren’t many knife fights in space. Except at that bar Coran took us to that time.”

“No, that was also a gun fight,” Hunk corrected. “Keith just brought a knife to it.”

Keith felt Pidge moving to pull up their shield before he saw it come into view, felt Lance moving to help her hold it, and Hunk and Adam bracing to stabilize their whole body. He felt the reverberation as the mech came at them, slamming into the shield this time instead of his Lion.

Voltron was fully powered, and they were all in sync in a way they’d never been before. But rather than give them any kind of advantage, it simply seemed to put them on equal footing with Honerva’s mechs. Even that was something to be thankful for, but it still meant they were unable to get ahead.

Especially with three mechs versus two. The only reason they had managed to not be outmaneuvered while being outnumbered was that Kuro was still mirroring the mech feed back to them and the pilots still hadn’t figured that out.

Kuro’s presence should have given them an edge even being one down. Keith had seen Honerva’s clones move, back when they’d still thought the one on the Castle of Lions was Shiro. The Black Paladin had been one of the Galra’s worst nightmares even outside of a Lion, and on more than one occasion Keith had watched him cut down huge numbers of opponents.

In full control of a mech that seemed to move like a natural extension of his body, Kuro should have been cutting these guys down. But Keith could see that something was wrong…he was gradually slowing down, taking more hits. The blood from his nose wasn’t stopping, and his eyes were starting to look a little bit glazed.

Keith wasn’t the most scientifically or mathematically skilled of his team, but he wasn’t stupid either. He had felt the push Kuro gave him down on the airfield, and he knew the clones had some Galra DNA in them. Kuro had at least some druidic abilities, he had to; unlike the Lions, nobody who wasn’t gifted could use those mechs.

But there was another very important difference between the two. The Lions filtered quintessence through their pilots, using them as a conduit. When they joined, it was five lives powering a single mech, and it clearly had limitations to protect the lives of those inside. Keith highly doubted Honerva had put in any such failsafes, and these equal-sized mechs were probably pulling the same amount of power from their single pilots. Living batteries, who needed to be able to funnel power through them in a way Kuro didn’t appear to know how to do.

He wasn’t just randomly slowing down, piloting that thing might be killing him. And the others knew it…every time the Paladins were distracted by one, the other two would double-team Kuro to wear him down faster.

“We need to figure out something, and fast,” Adam warned as Hunk gave a kick that sent their enemy rolling across the sand. “We’re pulling standard Garrison moves that we all know and they’re starting to learn them all. We’re being blocked more than we’re landing our punches.”

“That’s because they’ve got one pilot at the controls,” Pidge pointed out. “We have five people trying to work together. I mean, we’re doing pretty good, but it’s still a team effort.”

Keith closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Shiro wasn’t here to give him advice, Adam didn’t have enough experience with the Lions to be able to give advice based on his fighting experience. This would all be going so much differently if they were facing enemies outside of mechs, if each of them were able to fight unfettered instead of trying to move as a cohesive unit. That just wasn’t possible as they were.

…or was it?

Keith opened his eyes and looked back at his screen. He turned off all his monitoring programs, dropping all the readouts and number displays and leaving only the blank, open view of the desert in front of them. He felt Hunk and Adam keeping them balanced and upright, but if he pushed past that he could feel Yellow and Blue. Like his own arms, Green and Red were right there on the edge of his perception, underneath the familiar feeling of Pidge and Lance.

Across the sand, the mech was starting to push itself up. Keith watched it, ignoring the voices of the others. He shifted his right foot, sliding it back to change his stance.

“What the—?” Adam muttered.

Keith ignored him. He grabbed the shield, twisting his body, and threw it like a frisbee. Everything moved freely, responding to him like his own limbs, until the others grabbed their controls in surprise and he felt the resistance start to come on.

“Keith!” Kuro shouted a warning from across the sand and he didn’t question it.

“Stand down, everyone!” Keith commanded, slamming his bayard into the port. “Hands off your controls!”

The familiar saber flashed into his hands, but this time instead of relying on his controls as he had once done in the Red Lion—or now relying on Lance to do the same—he grabbed it with his own hand. Red responded like one of his own limbs, flipping the blade over to hold it underhand. Yellow and Blue both bent, dropping them to their knees as Keith twisted and brought the blade around to his right, slamming it upward into the neck of the second mech that was coming up behind them.

It sliced through, causing a rain of sparks as the druid pulled back and moved quickly out of range. The mech was moving jerkily, but Keith didn’t dare pull up a visual to see the state of the pilot. He didn’t have to, he could hear the annoyed conversation between him and the woman as he complained that some of the sensors were damaged and control of the left side was difficult. He backed away farther, into the shadow of one of the cliffs.

“Listen up team,” Keith commanded, sweeping the area to make sure he knew where all three of their enemies were. “We’re going to have to match them. That means one fighting style at a time, changed up every thirty seconds or until your maneuver is over, whichever comes first. Do not let them get a chance to start predicting our moves. Pidge, you keep time. Lance, you keep time when she’s fighting. When your time is up, pick somebody else at random to go. Turn off your status feeds and concentrate on what you see, ignore your controls. It’s just like in all our training exercises, as long as we’re all linked up I think any one of us can move the whole thing.”

“That implies a neurological link up creating an artificial nervous system,” Pidge mused. “Which is probably made possible by the special connections that form when all of the Lions connect. If we’re each connected to a Lion—”

“Fascinating, tell me later!” Keith cut her off, pulling his bayard from the port. “Hunk, go! Bring down his cover!”

He pulled his bayard against his chest and fully relinquished any control. True to form, Hunk began screaming in panic even as he loaded his bayard and took control next. It was a weird feeling, not completely unfamiliar but far more pronounced than any of the exercises they’d ever been through. If he had to describe it, he would say it was most similar to the circlets they’d had to wear while connecting and sharing thoughts. Only now instead of thoughts it was sharing a single body.

Hunk summoned his shoulder cannon and started raining fire on the cliff behind the mech. It moved out of the way, but not before a cloud of dirt and debris rained down into the sliced opening, causing further sparks as exposed, delicate mechanics were littered with outside particles.

“Lance!” Hunk exclaimed. “You’re up!”

“Hope you’re strapped in,” Lance warned. “I didn’t practice all those Voltron Show moves for nothing.”

“Oh, God,” Keith breathed, immediately double checking that his harness was secure.

“Oh no,” Hunk whispered.

“Don’t throw up,” Pidge encouraged. “_Please_ don’t throw up.”

Keith felt their hand shift, but it wasn’t to use Lance’s bayard. Instead he pulled out his jaw blade, gripping it like a combat knife. One of the mechs was engaged with Kuro far out in the desert, but the woman was ordering their partner to get his damaged mech under control. Its movements were growing jerkier and spastic.

Lance ignored the damaged mech. Instead he charged the woman, forcing her to divert her attention from giving orders and defend. He kept the jaw blade out and visible, but didn’t use it. Instead, at the last minute, he tossed it over her head to land in the sand halfway between her and the malfunctioning mech.

Keith was about to demand to know what Lance was even doing when Lance took advantage of her looking up at the blade to roll forward under her arm. Everything lurched as Lance sprang to his feet, spinning and slamming a kick into the side of her head. He followed it up with a second spinning kick and tried to do a third, but she caught his foot on the third time around. The mech braced and she flipped them and for a moment Keith thought_ he _might throw up.

Lance landed in a handstand, rolling forward to come to a stop on his knees right next to the thrown jaw blade.

“Adam, go!”

“I hope this glowy thing does something useful,” Adam muttered. “Guess we’re about to find out.”

He had to be talking about his bayard. Blue must have been prompting him, as the Lions had all done in the beginning. Keith shared Adam’s hope.

He felt the familiar, faint vibration of a bayard being activated and a second later found Adam holding a spear. It wasn’t quite the same as the polearm he had used down in South America, this one had a pointed tip instead of the curved blade, and the counterbalance on the end was smaller and had a decorative notch. But as the woman came at them it proved to be very useful as a weapon he was familiar with.

Adam blocked the first three blows that came at them, using the spear to sweep the mech off her feet. She kicked up a foot and hooked it, trying to pull it out of his hands but instead pulling them forward far enough for her to grab it. Adam held on with both hands, but with their positions she now had leverage, using it to yank them forward.

But instead of a stumbling fall it was a controlled roll. Adam came up on his knees and shot to his feet, spinning with the spear in both hands and planting it right between her shoulder blades as she was rising.

The point hit home, but the back of the mech was well protected. It dented without piercing, and she was able to turn and kick at him.

“Ten seconds!” Pidge warned.

“I only need five,” Adam grunted.

He backed up, and while she was off balance from her kick he moved around her. Keith felt the pull on his own legs as they slid to a stop in the sand next to the dropped jaw blade, which Adam scooped up and slid into the notch of his polearm. He used it to launch the spear, catching the other mech by surprise as the point slammed through its neck and into the cliff behind it, pinning it in place.

Keith slapped on his data feeds again, and found one of their opponents’ comm lines now gone. The lights on the mech sputtered, slowly starting to die.

“We got one,” Lance breathed, sounding almost shocked. “We took one down without firing anything they could throw back.”

“No time to celebrate, our leading lady is up and moving again!” Hunk warned. Keith saw the undamaged mech moving out of the corner of his eye.

“I’m taking it,” he called, flipping the jawblade around in his hand.

He spun around and brought it up to block the blow that came at them, then slammed his bayard back into the port. He went on full offense with the saber, keeping the combat close, trying to tire her out.

She began to back away and Keith followed, keeping his full attention on her only realizing they’d made a mistake when it was too late.

He felt the pain first, ripping through his chest with an ungodly burning, making him scream out loud. He thought he heard everyone else do the same but he couldn’t be sure, his mind was momentarily consumed by the pain. It took a few seconds to focus on the spear protruding from the torso of the Black Lion, forced through from the back.

Keith felt it as if he’d been stabbed through his own body. It happened so quickly, the damage so complete, there was nothing he could do except watch the world go out of focus as he fell to his knees, looking up at the damaged mech. It was still cut open at the neck, its inner wires still exposed and sparking slightly, but it was moving much smoother now.

Fully functional, not at all broken. Playing with them, just like they had all been doing since they’d arrived. Holding back to give the Paladins a false sense of security and just waiting for the opening they had just stupidly given.

Keith tried to fight it but felt his consciousness fade as he fell, hitting the sand below hard as the world bled quickly into black.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Indirect and minor mentions of Curtis' swiftly declining health and imminent death. There's unfortunately nowhere I can put the trigger warnings that won't cut out parts of the story. We will soon be moving past the point in the story where these trigger warnings cease to be necessary.
> 
> * * * * * * * * * *
> 
> My apologies for how long this took. I've been working from home, but my anxiety is high and my nerves are shot. I had high hopes that I would get a lot of writing done, but instead I've spent most of my time staring at calming YouTube videos. This chapter is longer than most, I've decided to condense some things to avoid having more cliffhangers than necessary. Monday I return to working at the office, hopefully a bit of structure to my work schedule will get me back on the writing track.

The Paladins were down, all of them unconscious if the radio silence was any indication. Kuro could still sense life, beneath the current of concern emanating from the five Guardians hidden in their ships, but they were unresponsive.

He was also down, and there was nothing he could do to help. He knew now how foolish coming into this fight was, but a part of him had harbored a tiny sliver of optimism that he could avoid the death he’d foreseen and help turn the tide.

Obviously he had been wrong. Just like in the lab with Lotor, this machine was sapping the life from him and wearing him down to nothing. He was panting, trying to pull in enough air even though his health readouts said his oxygen levels were fine. His extremities were going numb in spite of the small diagram up in the corner of his screen indicating circulation and muscle strength were at ideal levels. His brain functions were starting to skip, the only indication from a physical standpoint that anything might be wrong, but everything else was perfect.

And yet, here he lay out in the desert, discarded in the sand like a broken doll. The machine he controlled was still in peak condition, but it felt like every move it made was fueled with blood and he was running dry.

His screen was a bit blurry to his eyes, but he could tell he was lying on his side from the directional pull of gravity. He remained motionless and silent except for the panting, doing his best to keep his growing hunger under control.

He could feel the pulse of this planet beneath him, the gentle tides of Earth’s quintessence pool flowing below the surface and bubbling up in every living thing like natural springs. This mech was programmed to drain that life to sustain itself and it was a difficult internal battle to keep himself from activating that feature, but it was pure torture to feel that power so close and force himself not to touch it himself.

“Ryou.”

Curtis’ voice broke the silence, whispered as if the druids in the other mechs might somehow hear him. Kuro said nothing, focusing instead on forcing the air in and out of his lungs.

“I know you can hear me, Allura and Lotor synced the comms from our three units to the Garrison channels. Please stop ignoring me.”

Kuro still didn’t answer. Curtis had been attempting to speak with him since he’d launched the mech, but the fact of the matter was that there was nothing to discuss. There were no further words to exchange, and Kuro already knew what Curtis would say if he did respond.

“_Please leave,_” Curtis’ next words proved Kuro’s expectation correct. “They’re distracted by the Paladins, I can open the shield enough for you to get out of our atmosphere. I don’t care if you jump six systems over or if you just land on the far side of the moon, but you need to go.”

Kuro let out a soft breath through his nose and slowly rolled over. He forced himself up to his knees, running his scanners again even though he knew nothing had changed. All three enemy mechs had cosmetic damage but were still fully functional. Unlike this one, they had already been charged to capacity at some point prior to their launch, probably at the expense of some helpless planet or star.

“They’re going to come for you next,” Curtis was still trying. “We both know that. Don’t give them what they want.”

He sounded so tired, Kuro could hear it even through his own issues. Curtis’ voice was soft, like he didn’t have the energy to speak at full volume, and laced with traces of strain. He didn’t have much left, but there he was. In that control room, pushing through to his last breath, probably running scenarios to come up with some Hail Mary to save Earth. Even while dying, saving everyone else on his endangered planet came first.

But then, wasn’t that exactly why Kuro was out here in this fight as well?

_Mortals are your own kind, just as much as I am_, Gold had said. _You have two worlds now, you can belong to both. It doesn’t need to be one or the other. _

Kuro had tried to be a Reaper, existing outside of everything happening in his universe and doing his best to not get involved lest he cause irreparable damage. He had tried to enter the fight as a human, to pilot this mech like a Paladin and limit himself to the physical.

Neither had worked. There was nowhere in this universe to hide, and resisting without really pushing back did nothing but eventually give more and more ground. He had to stop trying to be only one half of the whole, because neither half was cutting it.

_I understand not wanting to overexert yourself when you don’t have a feeding source, but your presence here should still be much…bigger._

The things in these mechs were no longer Alteans, the bodies had been stripped of their souls and left as empty puppets. The machines they piloted gave the parasites within an augmented strength they wouldn’t have without the mechs, but the bodies they wore were fragile and slowly falling apart now that the life had been sapped out of them.

That these pathetic things would be what would take him out, what would destroy the one place in this reality that was beginning to feel like a home, was infuriating. He had fought so much worse for millennia and had always walked away victorious, he had crossed the border between realities and survived what should have been a suicide journey, he had found his way to freedom and was still standing under his own power.

Kuro turned off the health monitors, they were useless to him right now. He turned off all the monitors, in a moment none of their sensors were going to be correctly functioning.

He had been very angry lately and he could feel that starting to well up again, a dry tinder sparked to life by the insult of these three Formless showing up on his planet. He was angry at Honerva, for being so weak she would let herself be manipulated into believing she had to sacrifice the whole universe to save the child she’d endangered in the first place. He was angry at the thing that used Honerva as its shell, wreaking havoc and destroying billions of lives over the centuries.

He was angry at these Guardians, for not doing more to defend the literal children that were piloting their mechanical avatars. He was angry at Curtis for dying. He was angry at whatever gods might exist, for turning their backs while all of these things happened. And he was furious at his inability to fix any of it.

No, not his inability, his intentional inaction. If Kuro finally understood anything, it was that being too afraid of responsibility to make his own decisions was what was holding him back. Big choices, the ones with repercussions he would have to live with, had always been something he’d shied away from.

Even now, he was only following a blueprint laid out by a vision he’d seen years ago. Only fighting using maneuvers that had been dumped into his brain by Honerva when this body had been created. Piloting a machine that had been salvaged and studied by Allura and Lotor. There had been no real choices to make here, he had simply plugged himself into an open spot prepared by other people.

“Ryou, please. I can’t sit here and watch you kill yourself for no reason.”

Curtis was begging now, Kuro could hear it in his voice. And if nothing else about this made him angry, that did. Curtis wasn’t a man who let himself be reduced to begging, or who decided a fight was lost before it was over. He was annoyingly optimistic in his own way, a man who didn’t admit defeat until he had no other alternative.

He shouldn’t be in the control room right now. He should be comfortable, he should be lying warm in a soft bed facing his end in peace. He had earned that much, and none of these bastards had the right to take that away from him.

_You’re the Storm Warden. And eventually you’re going to remember that, and you’re going to stop being scared and start showing everyone here what that means._

Kuro stood up and took a deep breath. This mech was just that, only a machine. He was the pilot, he decided what it did and how it ran, and if it needed outside power to fuel it then that’s what it would get.

Along with the anger, there was something else bubbling up in the background. He had felt it there before, a buildup eerily similar to the quiet storm that always seemed to dance around Allura. It wasn’t exactly the same, they were on different ends of the spectrum, but Kuro knew that if he wanted to he could use it. He had been ignoring it, certain that if tried while he had so much anger building he would do something that he’d regret.

He severely doubted he was going to regret anything he was about to do to these three.

He reached out and pulled it to him, feeling it wash over in a barely-contained wave as he forced it through the mech. He could feel the change immediately, the way the suffocation receded and his lungs could fill with air, even as the lights of the cockpit grew brighter to indicate a full charge.

But Kuro didn’t stop with the mech. He reached out farther, expanding his sphere of influence to everything around him. There were traces here in the desert, an invisible history of things that had walked or swam the planet over millions of years. They left their marks in fossils and fragments in layers buried deep, and when they were called they woke, hungry and eager to obey.

The sand parted nearby like water as a fin broke its surface, sun-bleached bone instead of cartilage, speeding past before disappearing again. What it was attached to remained unseen even as the ground exploded beneath one of the mechs and it was dragged down out of the sunlight. The other two launched themselves quickly into the air, putting some distance between themselves and the ground as they searched for their invisible foe.

Kuro moved quickly, sprinting over to the fallen Paladins where Voltron still lay with its own spear protruding from the Black Lion. The five pilots were probably suffering a sensory overload that had knocked them unconscious; the way they’d been moving earlier, so easily and smoothly, led Kuro to believe they had finally synced up with the mech in a way similar to how the one he was in worked. Their brains were telling them they were stabbed through the chest and their bodies were reacting to that, their connection had to be broken.

He gripped the spear, forcing electricity down through it with the force several lightning strikes. As Kuro hoped, the shock caused a surge defense to kick in, and the five Lions detached with such force they were flung apart in all directions. Kuro was thrown across the nearby road by the shockwave, inadvertently taking the spear with him as it was yanked free from the Black Lion.

But it proved to be useless, dissipating in his hands as the alchemy that formed it was broken.

The sand shifted out in the desert as the mech that had been pulled beneath resurfaced, struggling to drag itself out of the grip of the hidden monster below. There were other things that Kuro could call to help him, terrible things that had once roamed the Earth, but the collateral damage would be too great.

That was the biggest problem, as it had always been. Kuro had always been afraid that letting completely loose would hurt the people around him, and that was especially true in a fight that was destined to be so large scale with so many people nearby. There were innocents in the city, hunkered down in basements and closets, suffering through a repeat of a horrifying trauma that had torn their lives apart.

Not a single one of them was an acceptable casualty. Nor were the Paladins, who were going to need help. Help that couldn’t reach them while a battle was raging out here.

And help would come. Kuro had seen that in his vision as well, Allura and Takashi had been present and Lance had been up and moving. But how long that help would take to get here was the question, and he had to make sure it didn’t arrive on an already-obliterated planet.

“Okay, fine,” Kuro murmured, getting back to his feet as the three mechs regrouped to consider how much of a threat he might really be. “We all know I can’t keep this up for long, but if I’m going to die here I’m taking all three of you with me.”

* * * * * * * * * *

The satellite system being up and running again felt more like a curse than a boon. Curtis sat alone in the otherwise empty communications room, having sent his team underground to the safety of the tunnels, watching the images dancing across his screen with his teeth clenched.

Five pilot life signs, programmed to automatically feed into this command center from their armor, were showing extreme distress. Vital signs had spiked dramatically with the impalement of the Black Lion, then had dropped to almost dangerously low levels, and nobody was responding. The numbers being spit out by the armor sensors were all eerily identical, and exactly what Curtis would have expected if he were looking at readouts from a person who had been physically stabbed through the chest.

The only explanation for that was that the five were too closely synced with each other, and in turn too closely synced to Voltron. Their bodies weren’t dying, but their brains were reacting as if they’d each personally taken the damage done to the Black Lion.

It was all a very cut and dry series of events. Enemies had attacked, their main defenders had fallen, their defenses were minimal and very few civilians had made it to the safety of the particle barrier. A barrier that Curtis couldn’t even say for certain would defend them against these mechs, because it had never been tested in this situation. Ryou wasn’t responding and he was also down, which was a nightmare of its own kind for Curtis. The bad guys had the upper hand, the fight was going to end in their favor.

And then, unexpectedly, it wasn’t so cut and dry.

Ryou’s mech readings showed a power surge, leaving it with a full charge, then a warning flashed across the screen of a very large, unidentified life sign moving across the desert with disturbing speed. Curtis focused in with his satellite feed, but was sure he was starting to hallucinate when he saw what looked like a huge shark fin sink below the surface of the sand.

A mech went down, disappearing from sight, and the other two scattered into the air.

“What the actual fuck is going on out there?” Curtis breathed, trying to follow the strange turn of events outside as the world seemed to turn on its head.

But everything was moving too fast for his tired brain to puzzle through. Two mechs were in the air and Ryou had reached the Paladins, forcing the Lions apart. The separation threw him back as the vanished mech clawed its way out of the sand, and the three enemies took to the air and moved warily back out of reach to reconsider their options.

“Curt?”

Curtis snapped out of his confused daze when Ryou finally responded to him. He muted everything else, leaving only the sound for the comm line on.

“I’m here,” he said breathlessly. “What’s going on out there? What just happened?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ryou answered. “I’m going to take care of these three. In a minute it’s going to look like everything’s over and it’s safe, but it won’t be yet. Get your people out there and get as many civilians inside as possible, but be ready to put your barrier back up just in case.”

“What does that even mean?” Curtis asked, rubbing his temple. He was so tired, like he was running on empty and just wanted to lie down and sleep. “What are you planning?”

“I’m going to take care of this,” Ryou repeated. “I’m sorry, I know you wanted all of this to end peacefully and you wanted me to be there with you when it did, but I can’t be. Get your sisters to the base, let them be there, I don’t want you to be alone…I’ll see you on the other side in a couple hours.”

For a second, Curtis didn’t know what that meant. It hit him all at once that Ryou didn’t intend to walk away from this alive, he was going to sacrifice himself for whatever it was he intended to do. And sure, in reality he was an immortal being that Curtis would never really understand, one who would just be reborn again eventually and pick up right where he’d left off, but when that happened he wouldn’t be Ryou. He wouldn’t be Kuro, he wouldn’t have the Paladins or Shiro or his grandmother. He might not even be reborn again in this universe, as a human being.

In the bigger picture that didn’t matter, but to Curtis it did. Ryou had only just decided that he might be able to make a home for himself here, to patch together a family for himself, to have that all wiped away was as real a death as what Curtis was facing himself.

“Whatever you’re going to do, don’t,” Curtis warned. “Just keep them busy long enough for us to get the Paladins out of their Lions, we’ll come up with a plan.”

“I have a plan,” Ryou answered calmly. “Alchemy’s not the only field of magic that can transform a machine. I’m going to make these three piss their pants and wish they’d never come.”

“No, you need to— Ryou!”

The comm line went dead, completely. It wasn’t just Ryou not responding, he had turned it off and could no longer hear anything Curtis said. He swore in four different languages, slamming his fist on the console with a swing that was so weak it just upset him further.

On screen, something else was happening with Ryou’s mech. The readouts on Curtis’ monitor flickered and changed in a way he’d seen once before, on the Atlas as Shiro had activated the Infinite Zero crystal to change the ship’s shape. But Ryou didn’t appear to need any help from a crystal.

There were arcs of what looked like electricity dancing over the machine’s surface, purple-tinted sparks of lightning that seemed to be caused by the friction of shifting metal. The elongated sides of the head, similar to a Hammerhead shark, curled upward and back into pointed horns, while the pointed back of the pelvis and extra boosters on the hips shifted back into one and stretched out into a tail similar to the Sincline. The oversized torso slimmed, at least half of its mass flipping away from the sides and around to the back, joined by the large shoulder shields and wrists lasers that Ryou hadn’t bothered to use.

The metal itself finally dimmed, the light from the sun no longer glinting off it as it faded from the silvery white to a dark black. The mech stood out in the desert, shaped more similarly to a human body now than the oddly proportioned humanoid it had started out as.

The final change was loud, so loud it echoed out even to here, and Curtis both heard it faintly with his own ears and felt the reverberations through the ground. A loud, deep cracking sort of noise, as the bulk that had gathered at the back suddenly snapped out in a pair of bladed wings. But instead of sharp metal they looked skeletal and white, all the organic shape of living limbs with none of the substance, wet in some place with a deep red as if they’d just been born out of live flesh. More claw-like bones snapped out of the mech’s forearms and shins, razor sharp and wickedly hooked to cause maximum damage.

Even knowing Ryou was the one inside of that thing, the end result was like something out of a nightmare. The Altean mechs were clearly enemy machines that were here to rampage, but this thing looked like it had clawed itself out of a sealed crypt looking for blood. The black metal seemed to swallow the light instead of reflecting it, and the once-sharp angles were now more organic and creepy. Like metal bones protruding from matte steel skin.

Even more disturbing were the readouts. They were like nothing he had seen after the Atlas change, even after the ship had taken an almost human form. That mech now had its own separate life signs.

It had its own _pulse_.

If Ryou’s intent was to make somebody piss their pants, he had just about managed it with Curtis.

The next thing that happened felt very weird. It started with Ryou putting up what looked almost like a particle barrier, but the dome was a dark gray color that blocked out much of the light. And it didn’t stay just around the one mech, it spread outward at high speed and the sensors all went off when it contacted the base’s own barrier. Not only that but it passed _through_ the base’s barrier.

Curtis saw it, physically, with his own eyes as it passed through the communications room. He felt it run across his skin, sending a chill up his spine and making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. After it passed he felt like he had been dunked in ice cold water, similar to what it felt like to have Hoshi or Kosmo teleport him.

There was something very different about the room afterward, but Curtis couldn’t put his finger on it. It just felt wrong somehow, but he had other things to worry about.

All four mechs were now gone. His scanners were picking up nothing, everything was now calm outside. Curtis wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real or if he was finally slipping away from life and his senses were dulling. He sat in the quiet, waiting for something to change to tell him which it was.

“Curtis?” Gail’s voice came over the radio, breaking the silence. “The alarms went off, and the radar isn’t picking up anything in the area. What happened? Is it over?”

So it wasn’t just him. Those mechs really had disappeared.

“I…I don’t think so,” he managed “Ryou did something, he said it was going to look like the coast was clear but we should be ready. Get Raina, start sending troops out into the city to pull in as many civilians as we can while it’s quiet. And tell Sarah I need her to meet me in the medical bay right away. Hoshi? Kosmo? Are you two there?”

He waited a moment and was rewarded with a soft pop as the two wolves appeared in the comm room. Curtis reached up to run his fingers through Hoshi’s silky fur.

“I need a favor, guys,” he requested. “The Paladins are down. I need them out of those Lions and in the medical bay right away, can you guys do that?”

There was no response they could have given that he would understand, and they all knew it. Both of them simply disappeared, leaving Curtis to lean back in his chair.

He sagged down, letting his head rest on his arms with a dull uncertainty. What had just happened? Where had they gone? How long would it take the Paladins to recover from the shock they were going through?

An SOS sent out to the Atlas hadn’t been returned, either, which meant that the others were facing a similar onslaught. Would they survive to make it back to Earth? What about the people on the second colony?

Worst of all, what about him?

Curtis hated to admit it, but above and beyond everything going on, he was also feeling sorry for himself. He was tired, he wanted to go lie down. This wasn’t over, but Ryou had seemed to believe that Curtis wouldn’t be around to see the end of it. Get his sisters in here, he’d said, don’t be alone. He’d see him again in a few hours.

Curtis didn’t want to see Ryou again in a couple of hours. He wanted him to survive this, to make it back alive and be with him at the end. To go on after he was gone and hopefully eventually be happy.

He was startled awake by a pop, followed by a wet nose nuzzling his temple until he grudgingly raised his head. At some point he had given in and drifted off, and he felt that much worse for it.

“I’m fine,” he murmured, scratching Hoshi behind the ear. “I don’t suppose you could take me down to the med bay too?”

She waited patiently while he stood up on shaky legs, and barely seemed to notice when he leaned most of his weight on her. He almost fell when they appeared in the middle of the med bay, a nearby tech luckily catching him before he went down completely.

Sarah rushed over, along with another tech, and wouldn’t listen when he tried to insist he was fine. They got him onto a nearby gurney, where he could see the Paladins being laid out and their armor removed.

“Are they okay?” He asked breathlessly.

“Physically, yes,” Sarah assured him, pulling off his uniform jacket so she could fit him with a blood pressure cuff. “They all had low pulses and shallow breathing, but life signs are all starting to even out. What happened?”

“Voltron took a spear through the chest,” Curtis murmured. He felt like he had to force the words out. “The way it was moving wasn’t like anything I’ve seen them do before, it was like they were all in perfect sync. When the Black Lion went down they all did, they stopped responding and their armor readings dropped.”

“What about the other mech?” Sarah pressed. “We saw it launch on the monitors.”

“That was Ryou.”

“What happened to it? What happened to all of them?”

“I don’t _know,_” Curtis said tiredly. “He did something to his mech, like when the Atlas changed but different. Then he put up some kind of shield, and he was gone. They were all gone. Is there something wrong with this room?”

His head was swimming and he felt like his eyes were playing tricks on him. Everything about the medical bay was familiar, but at the same time it was eerily different.

“You see it too, huh?” Sarah asked, looking down at the gauge on the cuff. “I noticed it down in the tunnels. There was this flash of cold, and then they were gone.”

“What were gone?”

“The shadows,” Sarah clarified. “Look around, Curt. Nothing is casting a shadow.”

That made no sense, and on top of it was impossible. But as Curtis obeyed and looked around it became apparent that she was right. Everything looked strange because light touched everything, even where it should have been blocked. There were no shadows in here, and there hadn’t been any in the comm room.

“That’s insane,” he frowned, even though the evidence was right in front of his eyes and a healthy person had confirmed it. “Things can’t just stop casting shadows.”

“Well, they did. And it’s weird as all hell. Everyone sees it but nobody wants to be the one to say it out loud.”

Everyone was indeed rushing around to do their jobs, studiously finding things to look at that didn’t involve meeting each other’s eyes or staring around the room. Soldiers, focusing on the more obvious problems at hand before they tackled ones they couldn’t explain.

Pidge coughed and loudly sucked in a lungful of air, causing a stir as the doctors near her rushed over. Some of them were sporting bandages of their own, and in one case a splint; the results of being manhandled by Laurentia’s men when they’d invaded the medical bay earlier.

Hunk was the next to break out of the strange lock-up the Paladins were in, letting out a startled scream and sitting up, hands going to his chest. About a minute passed before Lance followed suit, his whole body spasming so hard he rolled clear off the bed he was on and hit the floor with a loud ‘thud’.

Thirty seconds more, then Adam let out a loud exclamation that wouldn’t have been polite in any sort of company, rolling over on his side and curling up with his hands pressed against his own chest.

Keith was last, likely because he had the closest bond with the Black Lion. His eyes snapped open and he took a deep breath, but he was eerily quiet in comparison to the others. Curtis noticed he was awake before the nearby doctors did, but could only point tiredly in the younger man’s direction until somebody looked.

“Okay everyone, get them checked out and ready to roll back out within the next five minutes!” Sarah called, clapping her hands loudly for attention. “We’ve got soldiers out getting as many people inside the boundaries as we can, be prepared in case those things come back. Skies might be clear but this isn’t over…Raina, Gail, meet me in the communications room in ten minutes, I’ll get the Paladins down there and we’ll go over the surveillance video to figure out what the hell is going on.”

“I can tell you what’s going on,” Curtis huffed, pushing himself from the gurney. “I watched it hap—”

His feet hit the floor, but instead of supporting him his legs gave out entirely. Sarah caught him with an upsetting ease that spoke to just how much weight he’d lost in the last few months, and he found himself too winded to finish. The nearby tech helped her get him back on the gurney.

“Curtis, no,” Sarah said softly, waving the tech off once he was seated again and looking at him with concern. “You need to rest. You’ve done enough today, let us take it from here.”

As much as Curtis hated to do so, he had to admit that his time was over. His team was a good one, these three women would do just fine without him telling them what to do. He nodded tiredly, letting her push him back to lay on the gurney.

“I was back in room 21C before this all went down,” he sighed, giving in to how tired he felt. “That one might be wrecked, there was a fight. Can you just get me into another quiet room? And send in my sisters when they get here?”

Sarah nodded, squeezing his hand. That was probably the worst part of all of this…so many of the people he loved and cared about were fighters, whether that meant soldiers or doctors or Paladins. As big of a deal as dying was for him, most of the people who would want to be there couldn’t right now even if he decided to allow it.

She let him go and asked the tech to take him down to 26A, then called for a soldier to go directly to his sister’s house to pick the two women up and bring them to the base immediately. That was the last thing he heard before he closed his eyes and finally let himself zone out, forcing himself to stop focusing on problems he was no longer able to help solve.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Am I the only one who sees that thing is bleeding?” Lance asked in disgust, trying to keep back the natural urge to heave. “That thing is bleeding, right?”

They all sat in the communications room, looking up at recordings of the strange, alien mech from half a dozen different satellite and ground monitor angles. The back had torn open like thin skin when those wing-like things had come out, and though what appeared to be wounds closed up almost immediately there were still traces of red on the sand and the bones.

“It’s bleeding,” Hunk said tersely. He left it at that, clearly trying to keep his own stomach from being unsettled, his attention on the console in front of him to avoid seeing anything too gross.

“Cool, cool,” Lance was glad he wasn’t just making things up, people thought he was crazy enough these days. “So is that a bug, or a feature?”

“Quintessence levels spiked in the area,” Adam answered. He had some readouts on the console in front of him as well, but he had his attention on the main screen. “Historically, the Atlas’ own records show similar readings the day it transformed into a mech.”

“So it’s not a bug or a feature, it’s an outside upgrade,” Keith reasoned.

He was sitting next to Lance, his arms wrapped around his middle and his head resting on Lance’s shoulder. Keith was holding on very tightly, but Lance wasn’t going to complain. He needed the comfort after what had happened out there just as much as Keith did.

Lance reached up to lightly squeeze the back of Keith’s neck, letting his head fall to the side to rest against the top of the other man’s. It would be really nice if those clear skies outside meant this was all over and that they could go home and curl up safely in bed, but he could feel in his gut that wasn’t the case.

“Quintessence levels are still spiked,” Lance pointed out. “I don’t need your readouts to tell me that, I can feel it. And it’s not like when Allura pulls out her bag of magic tricks either, this feels like Honerva.”

“More like Honerva, not exactly like her,” Keith corrected. “I feel it too.”

“All I feel is nauseous and angry,” Pidge answered. She was standing up closer to the screen, her hands on her hips as she studied the images. “Can you play through the video again?”

Gail nodded and started it up, and the still image began moving again. Kuro’s mech held out its hands, and what looked like another piece of bone slid out of each palm. They went until they were about the length of the mech’s thigh, then blades snapped out of them to form two war scythes. The wings spread out wide and it took off, rising up into the air, and there was a flash of light emanating from the chest portal where the original mech would have absorbed any energy thrown at it.

In the video, the light formed a dome and spread outward. The wall of silvery gray hit the satellite and there was a moment of static, then it came back online to show all four machines had disappeared.

Pidge went back and played the last part of the video again, this time going from satellite to satellite in the global shield system. The same thing happened to each one she checked, albeit at different times, until she got tired of replaying it and stopped.

“He changed his mech from one that uses energy weapons to one that’s tuned for a physical fight,” she said after a minute. “To make sure he didn’t give them an extra edge with anything he threw at them. Then, whatever he did extended over the whole planet. The timing of the satellites skipping coincides with the theory that the dome was actually a full sphere that’s fully covering Earth. Now they’re all gone. But he implied to Curtis in the earlier audio that whatever he did might be undone and that things might not be safe yet.”

“So whatever he did is temporary,” Lance followed that much. “Some kind of shield? Maybe…maybe he took them all over into the quintessence field somehow, like our fight with Lotor?”

“I think it has something to do with the missing shadows,” Hunk spoke up, finally looking up from his console. “Remember out on the airfield? Right before all those soldiers started screaming, he did something to our shadows. They sort of stretched out and affected everyone they touched, except us because he was near us or whatever.”

“I think we should all just agree to never speak of that again,” Lance suggested with a frown. “Call me dumb if you want, but even I know a shadow is just a lack of light. Sorry, my brain can’t wrap around the idea that those can just move.”

“…state of being,” Pidge said suddenly.

“State of New Mexico,” Keith said helpfully.

“State of confusion,” Lance mused.

Pidge took a deep breath and fisted both hands, looking for a moment like she was going to scream. Puberty was not being kind to her mood, that was for sure.

“_State. Of. Being_,” she repeated forcefully, after apparently counting silently to five. “Shadows are a lack of light because we have sensory organs that evolved to process light visually. Everything we know about the universe is limited to our physical evolution. Maybe the reality is that light and dark are two different things, and that one isn’t just the absence of the other.”

“Like binary?” Hunk asked. “You can have either a one or a zero, but a zero isn’t just a lack of one and a one isn’t just a lack of zero.”

“I barely know what any of that means,” Lance said tiredly. “But I’m going to take the wildest of swings here and say you’re trying to tell me he…took away all the zeros?”

“Wait, are you suggesting a separate pocket of space?” Adam asked. “Is that even possible?”

“Ulaz did it,” Pidge replied. “He was the Blade who helped Shiro escape from the Galra and sent him back to Earth. When we met him, he’d created a folded pocket of space-time that was hiding the Blade’s communication base.”

“But a folded pocket would still take up some kind of space,” Adam pointed out. “Planet-sized, if this thing really did engulf Earth. But we can’t be in one, because our space scans are still working just fine, and there can’t be one here because then we’d be displaced.”

“I don’t think it’s a folded pocket.”

Pidge looked frustrated as she tried to explain something the rest of them clearly weren’t getting. She grabbed a stylus and moved over to the glass board below the main screen, drawing a rough image of Earth. Very rough, with the land in green and the water in blue.

“Pretend Earth is an image in an art program,” she tried. “The artist making the image creates a layer and puts on the ocean in blue. Then they create a second layer and put the land in green. On the screen it’s one picture, right?”

“Following,” Lance acknowledged. “Like a screen-print. You lay down each color in a separate layer, and when you’re done you have a finished picture.”

“Exactly!” Pidge pointed at him, then went back to the screen. She started making black dots along the top of the curve of the drawn planet. “Now I’m going to add people on the green layer. Let’s say these five dots are us. Now let’s say these four dots are Kuro and the other mechs. There are still two layers, but it’s still all one picture.”

“Still following,” Lance allowed.

Pidge selected four of the dots. She hit cut and paste, moving them onto the blue layer. Then she moved the blue layer away from the green one.

“What if it’s a layer?” She asked. “Each Lion has an element it does best with, and they’re all elements found repeatedly in different models of the universe. What if instead of layers of different colors, realities are made up of layers of elements all forming a universe?

“You think Kuro peeled an entire layer away from this reality?” Adam asked.

“Not an entire layer…just here on Earth,” Pidge clarified. “Gail, do you have any video Laurentia’s men? The ones that were pulled off the airfield?”

“Yeah, we have them down in lockdown,” Gail answered, tapping some keys. “Here’s the security feed.”

She brought up an image of one of the sealed rooms where the soldiers were being held. They’d all been disarmed, their belts and shoelaces removed and anything they could hurt themselves with taken. None of them needed to be bound, because none of them were in any condition to try to escape.

Lance winced at the sight. Grown men and women, well-trained soldiers who had seen hell in the Galra invasion, driven to borderline madness. Some hugged themselves and rocked. Some babbled out loud to people who weren’t there. One man, in a corner, was screaming intermittently, while nobody else seemed to hear him. They were all staring into nothing, as if they had lost touch with the world.

“Kuro said he showed them what Hell looks like,” Hunk recalled as Lance looked away from the disturbing scene. “I guess we’re built to experience reality in a certain way. Being peeled away on a single, separate layer might be enough to do that, even temporarily.”

“Yeah, you missed a lot,” Lance said in response to Keith raising his head with a questioning look. “I think by now we probably all realize Kuro’s a druid. And it looks like he’s one almost on Allura’s level.”

They were all dancing around the fact that Kuro had basically admitted he wasn’t going to live through this, and his hinting that Curtis wouldn’t be alive for much longer either. They all knew the Commander was sick by now, but nobody wanted to mention that part out loud in deference to Adam’s close friendship with him.

In Keith’s case, Lance could tell it was also because he was upset over the prospect of Kuro not coming back. He had seen the look on Keith’s face when he’d said “see you on the other side,” and he wished he had some magic words right now to make him feel better.

“So if this layer theory is accurate, how do we prove it?” Adam asked. “And what do we do with it?”

Pidge shrugged. Lance wasn’t hugely into science, but he knew that when Pidge, Hunk, and Adam were all stumped it probably meant they were talking about something completely unknown in the fields of human science.

Above Pidge, the main screen flickered. Both the videos of Kuro’s mech and the security feeds blinked off, leaving it momentarily blank, then one by one five different images came up. Lance recognized and picked out Red’s and Blue’s feeds immediately.

“Who turned those on?” Pidge asked, looking around at the others. “I wasn’t done with that video yet.”

“Not me,” Gail answered, holding up both hands away from her controls. “I thought one of you did.”

“Not me,” Hunk answered.

“Me neither,” Adam chimed in.

“I have my feet on the desk and Keith in my arms, I think it’s pretty obvious we didn’t do it,” Lance said.

Pidge stepped back to look up at the screen. It was definitely a line of feeds from the Lions, all trained out on the desert. The sensors on all of them were spitting out readings Lance couldn’t easily see. He pulled up his wrist screen and the others followed suit, getting a better look at what their ships were trying to say.

“Red’s picking up four…no, five major life signs in the desert,” Lance said after a moment. “Which I’m guessing means the four pilots and whatever the hell Kuro’s mech turned into.”

“Visuals are picking up nothing, but the sensors are definitely seeing them,” Pidge agreed. “Which makes sense if the Lions work by scanning all of the reality layers separately instead of just the whole picture.”

“Allura never said anything about the Lions working like that,” Keith warned. “She’s gone over these things a thousand times, and we’ve been in them long enough to know how they work.”

“We’re never going to know how they work, buddy,” Hunk disagreed. “I think it’s time to say out loud what we already know…the Lions are alive. Or something inside them is. These things upgrade themselves to be whatever they need to be.”

“Hey, Keith?” Adam called, sitting up a little straighter as he looked at the computer in front of him.

“Yeah?”

“Your Lion’s fixed.”

“No way,” Lance scoffed, kicking his feet down off the desk finally. He hauled himself up and followed Keith over to Adam’s computer, where he was using the satellite view to view the desert without the aid of the ships.

The Lions were still out there, right where they’d been left when Hoshi and Kosmo had brought them all in. But they were sitting up now, all facing out toward the open desert. The zoomed-in view of the Black Lion showed that Adam was right…where there should have been a gaping hole in the torso it was fixed.

“Okay, I know they’ve been known to sporadically update their own software or change a bit of their hardware when nobody’s looking, but that repair was fast,” Keith whistled.

“What if whatever’s in them are like Kuro?” Pidge asked. “Let’s be fair here, we’ve never come across a druid who could do these things. He came from a lab where Honerva was experimenting with clones and rift creatures, what if he’s one of those?”

“No,” Keith said immediately. “He’s way more like Shiro than any of those things we’ve seen. And he’s definitely not some weird otherworld creature using a dead body as a puppet, he’s had medical scans that proved otherwise.”

“Maybe that’s why Honerva wanted him back,” Hunk suggested. “Come on, look at that video again. Druid, Alchemist, whatever, do you really think any regular person would be able to peel a layer away from reality? That’s what we decided happened here, right?”

“So you think that’s why the Lions can repair themselves so quickly?” Pidge looked to Hunk. “Like, that it’s not actually a repair job, it’s just alchemically shifting the ship to make the damage go away?”

“Shiro did it with the Atlas,” Keith reasoned, grudgingly. “Or, rather, the White Lion did it through him. Voltron does it every time it changes from five Lions to one mech. Honerva’s mechs do it every time they form a new weapon, same as Voltron, and we know those pilots are some kind of interdimensional aliens from the rift. Kuro did it to his mech. So let’s assume for a minute that the White Lion, whatever’s in the Lions, Honerva’s druids, and Kuro are all rift creatures of some kind.”

“They wouldn’t all be the same,” Adam pointed out. “Look at those things down in the holding lab. We have the ones that were taken from the Altean kids, and the one that was taken from Lance, and they’re obviously not the same at all.”

“They definitely don’t like each other,” Keith agreed. “That big shiny one can make those smaller black ones run scared.”

“If the Lions are animated by something from the rift, do you think they literally just updated their sensors to show us proof of Pidge’s layer theory?” Hunk asked. “Just because we said it out loud and they were listening?”

“You seem to think the Lions are intelligent,” Gail said. “If they are, then maybe they were so quick to respond because they were trying to come up with a way to tell you and you just happened on the answer first.”

“Can everybody please pause and take a step back?” Lance requested, motioning with both hands for everyone to slow down a bit.

Every time a Nerd Bowl got started people always seemed to stumble away from the practical and toward the theoretical. Most of which Lance barely understood, wasn’t interested in understanding, and found very little use in right now.

“The more important question is, if the Lions are the same as Kuro and those creepy druid pilots, can they get to this supposed other layer so we can actually help instead of standing around planning the next research paper?”

“Another question is, if they can get over there, is it safe for us to go?” Adam added. “I don’t think we need to take another look at the looney bin in the basement to know we’re not built to survive wherever they are intact.”

“We don’t have to go in person,” Keith said, looking around the room. “We’ve been piloting the Lions from a distance for more than half a year. And that’s not just calling them or light flying, we engaged in full combat with Sendak’s fleet from the comfort of his brig.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Adam warned. “I’m doing my best here, but try to remember this is my first actual fight.”

“You’re doing fine,” Keith answered before Lance had a chance to. Not that Lance had expected him to say something harsh, but he was relieved the two of them seemed to be getting along decently at the moment. “If we can find somewhere quiet I think you’ll be okay. We have to move now, though, he can’t hold all three of those things on his own.”

“The basement labs,” Pidge suggested. “There’s a break room a few doors down from Allura’s main laboratory, anybody who has clearance to go down there isn’t here.”

Keith nodded and gave a soft whistle. The two wolves were curled up in the corner of the room, watching and listening, and rose to pad over when he called. Lance wasn’t sure when he’d started thinking of them as people who just didn’t talk, but in the last few weeks they were definitely proving to be part of the team.

“I think when this is all over, they should get some armor,” Lance smiled, scratching Hoshi behind the ear. “They go out into danger often enough, I think they should get something.”

“I’m not disagreeing,” Keith replied, rubbing Kosmo’s face affectionately with both hands. “You’re a regular soldier these days, aren’t you? He’s right, you should be safe too.”

They grabbed their helmets and Lance tossed his arm around Hoshi’s neck, giving her another scratch at her throat as Adam and Hunk joined him. He had been through this enough by now that he was prepared for the brief flash of cold and sudden change from the communications room to the far more comfortable break room.

A moment later they were joined by Kosmo, toting Keith and Pidge. Lance and Hunk tossed their helmets in the corner and the others followed suit, then he and Keith moved the coffee table from in front of the sofa to make some space on the floor.

Lance and Pidge started grabbing cushions off the chairs and sofa, tossing them to the others. He had to admit that he was perhaps moving a little bit slowly, partially giving in to the hollow feeling of discomfort in his gut. Lance didn’t want to say he was scared, but he could maybe admit a little bit that he wasn’t as confident as he could be.

Finally they dropped down to sit in a circle. Lance settled in next to Keith, and Adam sat down on his other side. Hunk and Pidge were directly within his line of sight, and finally he was forced to look around at the small group and really confront what had him worried.

These were his friends. His chosen family. People he loved more than his own life. Every day the stakes seemed to get higher, and he knew that eventually he was going to lose one of them. Maybe more than one. The nature of war was that not everyone came out at the end, and the knowledge that they might never speak to Curtis or Kuro again just brought home how easy it was to lose.

“You need to relax,” Keith was calm when he spoke, directing his words at everyone even though they were mostly for Adam’s benefit. “Don’t try too hard, you don’t need to. Reach out and they’ll reach back…you’ll figure out pretty quickly what to do once that happens.”

* * * * * * * * * *

It was far easier to be irritable and stressed out than it was to relax, but sitting in a quiet room with part of his adopted family instead of alone in a cockpit helped. Keith could feel Kosmo sitting nearby, and Hoshi, and if he dared to reach out a little farther there was something else almost soothing nearby.

The larger entity down the hall in the holding lab. He could sense it now, after Kuro had shown him what he should be looking for.

He felt behind the curve. He had always had a sensitivity to things other people didn’t, not just those glyphs in the mountains. For a long time, Keith had sworn he could still feel his father nearby, but that claim had gotten him branded “troubled” in the group home and had been the start of most of his problems, so he had labeled himself as crazy and shied away from anything that felt similar.

His sensitivity to quintessence throughout the war had been examined by Allura early on, but since he’d had no gift for alchemy it had been chalked up to his being Galra. They were a species who had steeped themselves in quintessence use over the millennia, they had just assumed he had some kind of hereditary dose. It was a theory that had been given weight by his addictive behavior once he’d realised he could tap the quintessence field directly through the Black Lion. A dependence passed down through blood.

Admittedly, his mother had no such issues. According to Kolivan, neither had either of her parents. But that was the only answer they’d had, so that was the one they’d decided to stick to.

Now, suddenly, a whole new world was at his fingertips. His control was lacking a bit, since he had no formal teaching, but he had been pulling through Black long enough that now pulling directly from the source wasn’t overwhelming. In fact, he was relying on his excessive use in the last six months to help them right now.

Keith hadn’t said so, but he knew they could get to where Kuro was because he knew _he_ could get them there. Just like Allura had used her gift to get Voltron into the quintessence field after Lotor, Keith could feel the pull of Kuro’s magic if he looked for it.

The question was whether he could get them over there separately. Allura had moved a single mech, they had no experience forming Voltron outside of their cockpits.

“It’s difficult, but not impossible. You have…_help_ nearby.”

Keith jumped, his eyes snapping open. He wasn’t even sure when he’d closed them, or when he’d stopped speaking to the others, but now the room was gone and he was in another place that was just as familiar.

The sky above was a little darker, the once-sparkling stars a little dimmer. The glassy ground that had mirrored the intricate designs of the universe above had lost a bit of its polish. It was no less magnificent, but it did feel as if time had invaded. As if thousands of years had passed in the few months since he’d last voluntarily stepped into the astral plane.

Keith scrambled to his feet and turned around to face the man standing behind him. Tall, pale skin, long black hair cascading down his back and over his shoulders. He was lovely in a way, but also very imposing in his heavy kozane dō and with the horned helmet under his arm.

“Welcoming” and “comforting” weren’t words Keith would use to describe his presence, either. He looked almost put out to be here, the heavy streak of white running along one side of his hair probably more from stress than fashion. The man smiled in a way that was obviously meant to be calming, but while Keith certainly didn’t feel threatened he didn’t feel soothed either.

“Who are you?” Keith blurted out the question without thinking. The man gave a small snort through his nose and raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t know me well enough to figure that out by now?”

He knew who—or rather, what—he was looking at then. This place was the astral plane within the Black Lion, and only those who were invited could come here. Besides other Paladins, Keith had only ever come across one other living thing during his stays here.

“Black,” he realized. “You’re the Black Lion?”

“In the flesh,” Black answered, coming closer. He was so much taller than Keith had imagined, forcing him to crane his neck upward as the other man came closer. “Well. In the incorporeal astral-projected form. I imagine it’s a shock, but this is the first time any of you all have consciously invited us to interact.”

“Us?’

Black didn’t move to point, but tilted his head up to look past Keith. Keith turned around to find the endless expanse of astral plane he’d initially seen gone, now the ground fell away into empty blackness only a few yards away.

Beyond that were other points of light in the near distance. He picked out Lance first, standing nearby on a red cliff, then Pidge still sitting down under a thick canopy of trees. Hunk was just past her, up to his knees in the gentle yellow grass of a wide-open plane, and Adam on a sandy dune surrounded by shells that shone in blue jewel tones.

They were also talking to people, tall elven-like entities clad in various types of armor and with varying tones of skin. Keith was seeing the Lions, all of them, separate from the machines they inhabited, for the first time. He didn’t really have a word to describe just how incredible that felt.

“Don’t get too hung up on the wonder of it all,” Black warned. “Your friend is in dire straits. He’s powerful, but one against three when he’s so close to drained aren’t good odds. We’re not exactly friendly with his kind, but under the circumstances we’re willing to help.”

“How?” Keith whirled back around to face Black, pulling his attention to the more important matter at hand. “Is Pidge right? They’re in a separate layer of this reality? Can you get there?”

“We, unfortunately, can do very little without you,” Black admitted. “The others and I, we aren’t part of this reality. We aren’t built to access the quintessence we need to use our full abilities, and we’re made of pure energy. That’s why we need the Lions, having a host of some sort is the only thing that stops us from dissolving completely. The Lions function by using living pilots that were born in this universe and are naturally plugged into the quintessence field through their life essence.”

“You need us to keep the Lions charged,” Keith surmised. “It’s a three-way link…us, the Lions, and you?”

“Exactly,” Black nodded. “What you’re seeing right now is one of two forms we have. This one is useful for working with one’s hands, and for speaking to mortals…but not as useful in a fight. The Lions were built in our image, our_ full_ image, and their capabilities in battle are far beyond anything you can imagine even now. However, for them to be used to their full potential, we need you to give up control and let us take over.”

“What does that mean?” Keith asked, glancing back at the others. “You want us to sit back and do nothing?”

“You need to sync up with the Black Lion, the same as always,” Black replied. “You need to see through its eyes, be connected with it in the same way you would if you were fighting. But I need you to not attempt to pilot.”

“Stay connected as your battery, and let you take care of the fight?” Keith asked uncertainly.

“Yes,” Black confirmed. “It’s not as easy as it sounds. You’ll feel what’s going on, if I get hurt your instinct will be to react. I need you to remain passive and not do that.”

He was basically being asked to give up control completely, to plug himself in to fuel a ship but trust someone else to get him through this alive. Someone whose full skill set he didn’t even know.

In the end it came down to trust. Black had never failed him before, and though this current interaction felt strangely off-putting, Keith had no reason to think he would fail him now.

“Whatever you need,” he answered. “Sit back, stay quiet? I can do that. How do we get you to him?”

Black lifted his head slightly as if listening. He nodded faintly in understanding, then looked back to Keith.

“The entity in the lab down the hall from you, he’s like your friend,” Black said. “He’s in tune with the same power wavelengths but, like us, he’s unable to use that power without a host of some kind. However, I can allow the Black Lion to briefly act as a conduit for him to use in order to augment your strength and allow you to phase all five ships across the boundary.”

This was getting both more complicated and more confusing. Not the facts, Keith had a pretty good handle on the concept of there being whole other life forms within the Lions that they’d never encountered before, Hunk had already pretty much theorized that earlier. He understood just fine that the Lions were alive and had inferred from Black’s words that they had never spoken to the Paladins before because they had never been connected enough through invitation to do so.

He also understood that the entity in the lab was an ally, if not a friend, and that Kuro belonged to this race of higher beings somehow. He understood there were good guys and bad guys.

What was confusing was how he felt about it. He wasn’t sure if he should be awestruck—which he sort of was—or if he should be more reverent and not talk to one of them like they were equals. He just didn’t know how to navigate this.

“Time is running short,” Black warned him. “If your friend becomes too weak, or if he dies, the support keeping the Shadow layer separate will crumble. If that happens on its own and without his control, any damage that’s been done on that side will seep into the rest of this reality.”

Keith didn’t like making snap decisions, but he had no choice. He nodded, unwilling to risk losing Kuro like he’d lost Shiro. This war was getting harder, and after today he knew that everything was going to change, but he was long past the point of stepping back and letting someone else handle it now.

“Okay,” he agreed. “Let’s go…fight some interdimensional vampire monsters.”

“Keep that good attitude, you’re going to need it,” Black advised, looking out to the other astral planes. “Relax, reach out, try to find your friend. As soon as the others are ready to go, things will get very exciting very quickly.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“Looks like Keith is ready to go,” Blue murmured, coming to stand next to Adam and look out at the others around them. “So is Lance.”

“That’s not surprising, I think their one shared brain cell got knocked loose and lost in that fight,” Adam replied.

His voice sounded calmer to his ears than he felt, almost confident. He doubted that fooled Blue at all, given that she was pretty tightly tied into his feelings right now.

“I’d love to tell you it will be fine, but I honestly don’t know,” Blue admitted. “I can tell you that Red has fought these things directly, back before we came to this reality, and so have I. Black, Green and Yellow were a bit more sheltered, but they were taught how to fight the same as the rest of us. Keeping the quintessence field free of those things is kind of our job.”

“How well do you think you’ll do over there?” Adam asked with concern, looking back at her. “This Shadow layer, obviously that’s the layer Kuro peeled off because that’s an element he has affinity with, right? What about us? What about you? Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Nature, none of those is Shadow. Will you be weak there?”

“We’ll be weaker than the ones piloting those mechs,” Blue admitted. “Formless thrive in places where reality isn’t completely fit together properly. But we’ll be stronger than we are here, and we’ll outnumber them.”

“Okay,” Adam took a deep breath, feeling numb. So much had happened in his life leading up to here that at this point his entire attitude was that weird shit may as well happen. “I trust you. Please don’t make that the wrong choice.”

“I’ll do my best,” Blue promised, looking back at the others. “Looks like it’s time to go.”

Adam couldn’t hear any of the other Paladins, but he could see that they had all moved to the edge of their little slivers of plane and were sharing looks. None of them looked any more confident than Adam felt, and they all appeared to share his I Guess This Is Just My Life Now emotional state.

“Relax,” Blue advised. “Hang on. We’re in this together.”

That wasn’t as reassuring as it was probably meant to be, but there was nothing for it now. Even if Adam wanted to back out he couldn’t, his vision suddenly went dark and it felt like the ground fell out from under him. The familiar sensation of freefall hit, flashing unpleasant memories of a crashing fighter jet through his head, before what felt like a blast of icy cold water washed over him. It was so cold it numbed him to anything else, dragging him back to the present.

And then he was running, but not in any way he was used to.

On four legs instead of two, he felt each impact with the ground reverberate through his limbs and joints. The sandy soil shifted beneath his feet, not packed tightly enough against something of his great weight, but his ease of movement made up for any issues the ground might cause.

His vision wasn’t as alien as it might have been for the others. His eye implants had prepared him for what he was seeing now, a world of night that sensitive visual machinery translated into dull color using the bare light provided by the stars.

What Adam saw was both familiar and not. This place was an exact replica of the world he knew, but where there had been no shadows in the place they’d left, here there was very little light. Everything was in shades of gray and dark color, which lended an even more sinister air to the scenery.

The city was in ruins, with everything that had been rebuilt over the last year torn apart and crushed underfoot by the sparring mechs. The Garrison base here, with no living things and no actual power running through it, was broken and fallen in, which gave this mission an even greater sense of urgency. Blue had said that if Kuro lost the battle here, everything would snap back together and this damage would translate over. Anyone hiding in the Garrison basements for safety would be killed.

He saw all three of Honerva’s mechs ahead, but Blue’s eyes went to the one that was closest and his perception was forced to follow. It was facing away, helping to surround a terrifying monstrosity that looked like it had taken heavy damage in the fight.

Adam felt his muscles contract then shift to pounce, felt his jaw clamp down on the shoulder of the mech he had in his sights. His digits flexed, digging four sets of claws into metal that tore apart beneath them like butter, and his body tensed against the sudden thrashing meant to throw him off.

Weight and momentum threw him free, but chunks of metal gripped in his mouth and claws came along, leaving gaping holes in the enemy mech’s neck, shoulder, and back. Adam prepared for impact with the ground, but it didn’t come. An unfamiliar center of balance shifted, hips twisting and tail flipping, turning him to land on his feet.

Green and Red came into view, flying past him, small and light and practically just big house cats compared to the larger ships on the battlefield. Green went for the mech Adam had just damaged, clawing her way up its back to dig her teeth into the workings that Blue had just exposed.

Red went direct on to a second mech, going straight for the energy absorption plate on the front. She tore into it with ferocious abandon, clinging with her front claws and scraping with her back ones to leave huge gouges in the torso. She was thrown free, but when the mech turned to fire on her it was slammed from behind by Yellow, whose very solid weight took it down and allowed him to get a tight grip on the back of its neck with his teeth.

Black came in snarling, throwing himself in front of Kuro’s mech, which was down on one knee and teetering slightly. Making up most of Voltron’s bulk, he was heavier even than Yellow and Blue, and he used it to his advantage as he went for the third mech’s legs.

They had caught the enemy by surprise, a gift that had allowed them to do a lot of damage, but as that element dissolved the three mechs struggled to pull back and reconsider their options. The Lions fell in together as well, and Adam had a moment to take stock of the situation.

Kuro had done a lot of damage himself, before their arrival. The mechs were sporting an array of deep slashes and gashes from his war scythes, and were covered in dents and dirt and scratches. But the cost had been steep; the strangely organic changes he’d made to his mech had given it a wider range of motion and more natural movement, but had also opened it up to damage that looked almost like open wounds. It was moving slowly and almost clunky, which meant its pilot was pushed beyond his limits and tiring.

“Keep him behind us,” Keith’s voice met Adam’s ears, a startling reminder that in reality they were all still sitting in the quiet break room in the Garrison basement. “He needs to conserve whatever strength he’s got to keep this place safely separated.”

“We’re aware.” This was a woman’s voice, deep and unfamiliar. Adam heard it more in his head than in his ears, and knew it wasn’t Blue. If he had to guess strictly from appearances, he would guess it was Red. “We’ll do our best.”

“If you could also avoid going straight for them in a way that lets them claw our faces, that would be great too,” Lance requested.

It was such a strange mix of sensations. Adam felt like he was here, like it was his body moving and preparing to stalk and pounce again. He was experiencing the Blue Lion’s every step and turn as if it were his own, but at the same time he could feel that he was still sitting on the break room floor. But there was another sensation there, one that brought home just how much danger he was still in. The faint ache of a fresh scratch and soft tickle of blood beading.

He didn’t move to touch it, and didn’t have to touch it to know he had been injured when Blue had been grabbed and thrown off. The connection here was much more solid and real than being stabbed back in the desert, and so much more dangerous.

“I have a scratch on my shoulder,” Adam said out loud, shifting it slightly. “Nothing life threatening, but something to look out for. Anyone else?”

“Just this cut on my face,” Lance answered. He sounded pretty calm in spite of the situation.

“I took a hit on the hip, but nothing major,” Katie answered. “Probably only a bruise.”

“We have to be more careful,” a male voice warned. Like with the female, he made a guess that it was Black, only because it wasn’t what he would imagine the man who had been talking to Hunk would sound like. “Damage seems to be transferring. I didn’t foresee that.”

“You don’t foresee a lot of things these days, do you?” Blue asked.

“Oh, foresee this.”

Black sounded petulant and annoyed, hinting at a simmering disagreement between him and Blue. Adam didn’t see what he did, but he felt the wind suddenly whip up in a frenzy around them.

It came on quickly with the force of a hurricane, lifting the debris around them and turning fallen trees and broken utility poles into flying projectiles. Red bound forward and the weaponized air seemed to part where she ran, allowing her to move freely while the enemy was forced to dig in to keep from being blown away.

Like a scene from a horror movie, the whipping wind became a tornado of fire as flames erupted seemingly from nowhere. The flickering walls added to the creepy atmosphere, lighting up flammable debris and turning them into whizzing fireballs.

They were focusing in on one specific mech, Adam could feel it as Blue started to follow along with Yellow. The fiery walls herded the woman away from the other two, cutting the head from the snake by separating the leader from the followers, arcing up over her in a ceiling of flame that stopped her from taking off to escape. The earth opened beneath her, exposing deeply hidden groundwater that Adam felt move as it lurched up from below to wrap around the enemy mech’s legs and freeze.

The heavy winds focused at a single point, picking up a fallen utility pole and propelling it into the mech’s absorption plate. It hit hard enough to leave a dent but didn’t do much more damage than that, until the wood of the pole itself seemed to spring to life and grow vines. They wrapped around the mech, pulling it tightly against the pole and forcing it through the plate to render it unusable.

Kuro moved unexpectedly then, flying forward to slam a clawed hand into the metal just above the absorption plate. With the mech’s power source destroyed it was unable to defend as Kuro dug in deep. He ripped the pilot capsule free and crushed it with both hands, eliciting an “ew, gross” from Katie and a “yuck” from Lance.

Adam kept his own opinions to himself. The kids undoubtedly had an abstract idea of what had just happened to the body inside that capsule, but Adam had seen enough death to have a pretty vivid knowledge of what kind of soup the pilot had just been turned into.

He didn’t feel sorry for her. As far as he could tell she had already been dead, all Kuro had done was deprive the parasite inside her of a functioning host.

“Yellow!” Blue called out, and then they were moving again. She bounded past Kuro and the fallen mech, racing toward the other two that were trying to regroup. The ground opened up again, and again Adam felt the flow of water below as if it were an extension of himself. It exploded upward, shooting into the air. “Black!”

The wind rose again, catching the splashes as they flash-froze into wickedly sharp spikes, sending them flying like a hail of bullets. They hit head on, but the pilots had seen what had happened to their leader and weren’t sitting idly by. Adam felt a flash of pain as one of them ducked through the rain of ice and slammed into Blue, knocking the wind out of him.

Blue let out a string of swears, and he felt that she was in pain too. He took a hit to the face, hard, tasted blood, and had to force himself not to react and to let Blue keep control of the Lion.

Yellow rammed the mech from the side and sent it flying, but Adam could feel the scratches running down his hip as the stupid thing dug in before it was pushed away.

Red and Green were having similar troubles, targeted for their small size. He heard Katie gasp and saw Green go flying past, thrown hard enough into a cliffside that both Katie and Green herself let out yelps of pain. Black was on her immediately, blocking the mech from moving in again even as Red recovered and launched herself at it from behind.

The fight became very physical. Adam knew the results could have been so much worse, but every soft curse and yelp of pain from the kids made him clench his teeth harder. He could tell his frustration was bleeding over into Blue as her concentration started to wane, her attention on everyone else all at once as she let herself be pulled in different directions to try and keep everyone safe.

Black helped, his sheer size and apparent anger issues making him a full-on brawler as he kept inserting himself between the mechs and the others, but Red made herself very difficult to defend with the way she kept throwing herself at her opponents. A raging ball of violent fury with multiple pointy edges, she more than made up for being smaller than the others with her extreme speed and instinct for exactly where to attack.

Yellow was slower and more methodical, with his strength being his literal strength and bulk, which made him the next favored target after Green, who in addition to being smaller wasn’t quite as much of a psychopath as Red.

After a few minutes of all of them being bashed around but still holding ground, the enemies made a mistake and let themselves drift far enough apart to be fully separated. The five Lions picked out the weaker, more damaged one and moved in, hunting as a pride to give chase and bring it down when it took off and tried to get away. It was beginning to slow down, both from damage and from not having anything thrown at it that it was capable of absorbing to recharge, and in the end Green brought it down with a well-placed grab of the throat and the others pounced.

Blue helped hold down the limbs while Black bit into the chest, destroying the absorption plate and wrenching the pilot capsule free. He crushed it in his jaws, turning it into little more than a crinkled pile of scrap metal, to ensure that the Formless inside could no longer use the body within anymore.

Adam was breathing heavy from the exertion, and he could hear the others doing so as well. He got the sense that the Lions were also tiring, the fact that they currently wore metal skins no help against the drain of a fight.

But there was no time for rest. Cracks began to appear in the ground, glowing veins against the backdrop of darkness. Blue and Adam looked up to see the atmosphere beginning to crack as well, a spiderweb of lines spreading quickly to cover the entire sky.

“What’s happening?” Katie asked.

“The layer is collapsing back into reality,” Black answered tersely. “Where’s the Reaper? Any eyes on him?”

“Back near where we came in!” Red called, already taking off with Green and Yellow at her heels. “With the other mech!”

Blue started running in spite of her growing tiredness, but they were all slower now than they had been when they first started. Aches and injuries added to the problem; Adam could see where the other Lions had suffered damage in the fight and knew that the Blue Lion was in a similar plight.

Flight had not been an option before now, as the five entities in the Lions relied on their natural physical similarities to the metal shells and didn’t want to detract from maneuverability with mechanical motion. But they all took off now, using boosters to get back to where they were needed faster.

Below, the ground was starting to fall away in chunks, the dull colors and grays of the shadowy reality layer collapsing into a shifting miasma of unrecognizable color and light. The cracks grew rapidly, and would have swallowed them all if they had still been running.

Up ahead Adam spotted them; the final remaining Altean mech and Kuro were locked together in a physical fight, the former sparking dangerously and the latter bleeding profusely with whatever fluid currently ran through its druidically transformed veins. It snapped and snarled and tried to bite in a way that wasn’t even remotely human, as if it had at least some life of its own outside of even Kuro’s control.

The landscape was in complete ruin now, everything within miles torn asunder by the fight. Adam knew now there was no way they could have won against those three mechs under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t have been able to exert the power necessary without completely obliterating half of their planet. Now it was possible half of the planet might be completely obliterated anyway, as this layer dissolved and merged back into real time.

The ground fell out below him faster than he was moving now, and solid chunks of what had once been sky started raining down as if they’d simply been a domed ceiling.

Red hit the two combatants first, slamming Kuro away from the attacking mech’s reach. Black followed close behind, only a little slower, grabbing the exhausted pilot before he plummeted down into the growing cracks between space.

Everything had fallen away except a small island in the dark, a little chunk of New Mexico barely big enough to hold all of them if they wanted to land. That broke apart as well, and Adam heard the other Paladins gasp out various renditions of “no!” He tensed, waiting for the ruined Garrison base to crush them all as the damage phased over into the rest of reality.

At what felt like the last minute, threads of golden light shot out from the final crumbling pieces, halting their collapse. All around them, fallen-away pieces raised themselves from the abyss below, reattaching themselves to solid ground as the world went into a disorienting rewind.

“It’s the other Reaper,” Adam heard Green call out to the other Lions. “But even a Gold can only buy so much time, we have to go.”

“I don’t think this one can do much more!” Black warned, slowly lowering Kuro’s mech to the ground. “He’s pretty weak and not very responsive!”

“White would be really handy to have around right now,” Yellow lamented. “He could probably merge this layer back safely.”

“Well White’s not here, we are,” Red answered. “Looks like we’re going to have to get a little more involved than we planned.”

“Subtlety is a luxury we don’t have anymore, as much as I hate to admit it,” Black grumbled. “We’re going to have to bring this back ourselves.”

“We’ll be announcing to the whole universe that we’re here,” Yellow warned. “Honerva’s going to realize Red’s not the only Guardian hanging around.”

“Good,” Blue spat. “I’d love to have her come at me, give me a chance to put three of my feet straight up her fuc—”

“Act now, talk later!” Green interrupted urgently. “By all the standard calculations, our best chance is to separate, envelope, and merge, but we have to move now!”

“Blue, Yellow, go below,” Black ordered. “Red, Green, you’re above with me. Time it carefully, if any one of us slips up this isn’t going to be good. No pressure. Go.”

Adam felt sensation begin to return to its normal levels. He was once again sitting on a floor, made up of two legs instead of four, with two hands that had five fingers. He no longer felt like the Blue Lion’s body was his own, as he was slowly eased out of sync with his ship.

_Do you trust me?_ Blue asked, this time heard privately in his head instead of shared with the whole group, as each of them were separated from the other Lions.

_Do I have a choice?_ Adam wondered.

_There’s always a choice, some of the options just sometimes involve being squished to death in a basement when mass destruction in a separated elemental layer translates over after reconnection._

_Oh, well then_, Adam supposed, trying to suppress the sick feeling in his stomach as the whole situation finally got dangerously close to the limits of what he could take. _Trusting you it is._

* * * * * * * * * *

_I’m going to be as careful as possible,_ Yellow promised, almost painfully apologetic. _But this is very dangerous, so we’re probably going to get hurt at least a little. _

_But will it save everyone?_ Hunk asked worriedly. _My parents? My siblings? Can this protect them?_

_If it works. You have to understand, we’re not…the best and brightest our prides had to offer. We were just a bunch of misfits who had nothing to lose by following Black into this universe…we’re doing the best we can, but we’re not exactly trained. We’re also still not at our full strength here, even when we’re borrowing avatars._

_That’s okay, we’re all just a bunch of misfits who had nothing to lose by following Shiro and boarding Blue, and look what we managed to do!_ Hunk tried to be optimistic. _Just…do whatever you can to protect everyone._

He trusted Yellow’s intent completely, able to feel his Lion’s desire to save as many lives as possible. He was as surprised as anyone to finally meet the entity—person?—that had animated his ship for the last ten thousand years, but at the same time it felt like he’d known him forever. And he supposed that might as well be the case, if everything he’d seen in the last year was to be believed then he and this person had been partners in more than one lifetime.

Everything about the world right now was surreal. A few years ago, Hunk’s greatest concern was whether they’d get those hazelnut snacks he liked in the cafeteria vending machines again, or whether he’d manage to get an A in the first quarter of his Advanced Placement Physics class. Now physics as he knew it no longer seemed to exist, the strict rules and complicated equations often breaking down in the face of…space magic.

Hunk knew it wasn’t really magic, that it was just so far past his ability to comprehend that it seemed that way. Alchemy had rules, they could see that much from Alfor’s journals that Allura used to learn, and surely whatever was happening here must have some kind of rules to it as well. The basic concept of a layered reality was understandable, with enough study perhaps how someone like Kuro manipulated it could be understood too.

That was a comforting thought as he took a deep breath and forced himself to relax again. Yellow promised to be careful and Hunk had to trust him. He had already seen him at work back in Peru when they’d been searching for Keith and Adam, so thankfully he had some idea of what to expect.

He saw through his own eyes as they opened, knowing that it wasn’t him opening them. His hands clasped and his knuckles cracked as his body got to its feet, all while he sat back and watched like a very tense casual observer.

The others were rising around him, and he picked out differences immediately. Hunk had subconsciously come to identify even the smallest details of his friends, he quickly noticed the slight changes in the ways they moved even before they opened their eyes and gave the truth away.

Kuro’s eyes had been pitch black when he’d worked his magic with those shadows, but the black of Keith’s eyes filled only his irises. The same with the vivid red of Lance’s eyes, the vibrant green of Pidge’s, and the bright blue of Adam’s. Logic would dictate his own were probably some shade of yellow, which was an interesting telltale sign that somebody else was behind the wheel.

Hunk tried to hold onto the curiosity that blossomed at the changes to ignore the nerves he felt. He was in good hands. They were all in good hands.

Hadn’t the Lions always looked out for their best interests? Why should this moment be any different?

Yellow raised both hands, and Hunk felt a familiar coolness flow through him. He recognized it from Peru, only this time he also had an inexplicable awareness that this power was being aimed at the room around them. The steel used to build the hangar and its labs might have been removed from the earth but it still belonged to it, and it still responded to its commands. The metal changed its shape almost like a liquid, the ceiling opening up above them and pouring down around them like a waterfall. It solidified in the form of stairs, and Hunk felt himself follow the others as they all raced up to the Atlas hangar and outside.

“It’s coming through!” Lance’s voice called out with Red’s inflection, a very weird thing to hear.

Yellow turned to look and found a large patch of the airfield was part of a smoking crater, the burnt, blackened ground coming to a stop suddenly in smooth, untouched asphalt in a way that made it look weirdly like some kind of movie set.

_Hang on_, Yellow warned. _I’ve never done this before, it might be rough._

_But you can do it?_ Hunk asked.

_Kuro is powerful enough to have removed the whole solar system if he had the strength, only moving Earth is a fraction of what he can do. Hopefully a small enough fraction that I’m up to it. We’re about to find out._

Up ahead of them, Keith stopped running now that he was out in the open. He closed his eyes and bowed his head slightly, a shining ball of purple light so dark it appeared black appearing between his hands. Pidge stopped a little bit behind him, doing the same with a shimmer of green.

Lance stopped beside Hunk, summoning a red light. From the disturbances Hunk could feel in the elements, he knew Adam was close behind him doing the same.

The ball of yellow light that appeared in his hands was very similar to what they’d seen Kuro’s mech do on the cameras. Hunk watched his own hands working it in a way he was familiar with, almost as if it were a bread dough to be kneaded and shaped. His fingers gave it a flick, urging it outward, and for a brief second everything was engulfed in light.

When it passed, Hunk had trouble truly understanding what he saw. It was a testament to the infinite wonder of the universe and his own very tiny existence that everything in his field of vision was an unidentifiable mish-mash of color and light.

He couldn’t actually see anything, none of this was meant for such lowly evolved organs as eyes. He couldn’t hear anything, or smell anything, or taste it, or feel it. Every sense that he used to navigate the world was useless here, in this place between layers that he simply wasn’t created to understand.

What he did glean from it he sensed through Yellow. He knew that he was somehow outside of the other layers of his reality, and he could feel the other four nearby. He felt their elements, pulling away from each other and pooling around each Paladin, separating from the world as a whole.

Instinctively, he knew that whatever they were doing would have to be done very quickly. This wasn’t the same as simply pulling shadows out from beneath everyone, they were pulling away basic building blocks of everything. Those blocks had to be returned before the reality they supported melted into a shapeless mess and leaked in to fill the empty space.

Just as quickly as everything pulled away, he felt the Water element coming back to meet Earth. Some distance away he could sense Air, Fire, and Nature coming together as well. That was when he finally understood what Green had meant by “separate, envelope, and merge.” They didn’t have any way to control Kuro’s layer and bring it back to the rest, so they were bringing their layers to his. Once all six were merged, they could be pulled back into reality as one.

Of all the things Hunk had imagined the Lions were capable of, completely separating an elemental layer from the rest of reality had not been one of them. This was almost too big to wrap his mind around, and his deepest instincts were to panic and take back control. He had to think about his family, huddled up in basements for safety, and what would happen to them if he interrupted what Yellow had to do.

He felt it when the other three rejoined Yellow and Blue, all five wrapping around a much more unfamiliar presence that must have been Kuro. Then the hard part began.

Reconnecting to the rest of reality was not a gentle process. As everything began to shift back to its proper place, sight and hearing and feeling returned. Hunk heard the roar of burning rubble, felt the pain of glass shards and broken stone beating on his skin. He could see the others, gritting their teeth against it all and fighting to hold everything together the same as Yellow.

The ground exploded under him, then returned to normal, then exploded again nearby, two versions of reality going to war as one was overlaid on the other. A burst of heat as the flames from a broken gas line whipped up beside him, splinters of wood biting at his face, a jagged piece of rebar slamming into him and deepening a gash he could already feel on his side.

One by one the Lions pushed their elements back into place, forcing Kuro’s layer to conform to theirs instead of the other way around. There was a cacophony of sound as it did its best to fight them, screeches of bent metal being pushed back into place, pieces of glass and cement crushing back together into a whole.

When it was over, everything went silent. Or maybe sound simply returned to normal levels, and his tortured ears mistook the quiet for silence. Hunk didn’t have time to consider it, he had to suck lungfuls of air into a body that had been deprived of it for the entirety of the event, falling down to his knees in a coughing fit.

He heard the others choking as well, all of them now released from the hold of their allies, trying to catch their breath.

It was over. As terrifying as it had all been, as sure as so many of them had been that this was the end, it was over and they were still standing. It had taken the help of six interdimensional beings, but they had won.

Or so Hunk thought…until the shadow of the forgotten third mech loomed over them.

* * * * * * * * * *

Pidge was running the numbers through her head even as she fell face-down onto the cold tarmac of the Garrison airfield, desperately trying to pull in air. She could barely fathom what had just happened despite having seen it with her own eyes, and was trying to put the vague idea she had into words that neither of the two languages she was fluent in seemed to possess.

It was like her brain just wasn’t big enough to encompass it all, and already bits of it were starting to fade because she simply lacked the capacity to keep them. But the Lions…the ships would have recordings and records of some sort, they had to. She probably wouldn’t be able to read them in any meaningful way, only so much could be converted into human senses, but perhaps she could write a program that would identify previously unknown things that they didn’t possess the faculties to experience otherwise…

The world, which had first been normal, then had been dark, then had been very confusing, and now was light, unexpectedly went dark again. Even face down on the ground, every fiber of Pidge’s being screamed that this meant danger, that something very large was blocking out the sun.

She clambered to her feet and started running without even looking, gasps of warning from Keith’s direction telling her all she needed to know, barely escaping as the fist of the forgotten mech slammed down into the tarmac right where she’d been laying.

The ground buckled under the force, throwing her forward and sending her rolling. Before she could get back up the fist came flying down again, fully intent on squashing her.

Red appeared overhead, ferociously clamping down on the mech’s shoulder, joined a second later by Green grabbing the mech’s offending hand by the wrist. Pidge didn’t feel the same pull she had earlier, when the Lions had needed to use them to keep themselves powered. With only one enemy left they seemed to be attacking all out, not worrying about draining their power reserves.

Red and Green weren’t the only one in the fight. Pidge found herself hauled to her feet by Adam, and half dragged across the tarmac as the other Lions joined in and the mechs went at each other overhead. She had never considered what it must be like to be down on the ground while Voltron or the Lions were fighting, and it was terrifying.

Adam shouted a warning and they both dropped to the ground as Black flew overhead, thrown to the side by the mech. His tail whipped behind him, missing them by barely a meter, and his claws raked the ground just in front of them as he passed in a way that threw chunks of cement toward her face. She threw up her arms and took a heavy hit to one, a burning sensation running all the way through her skeleton telling her she’d probably broken it.

Lance and Keith appeared in front of them, throwing up their shields to protect them from the worst of the onslaught. Hunk summoned his bayard, using the huge gun to shoot the larger chunks into smaller ones, which rained down on them more harmlessly.

The five of them were stuck out here as the battle raged on, unable to get to safety. This far end of the airfield was outside the base’s particle barrier, and every time they made a mad dash for the base they were cut off by stampeding feet or paws.

The mech grabbed Green and spiked her downward like a football, hard enough to cause a crater in the ground and send huge pieces of earth flying. Hunk’s gun had nowhere near enough power for that, leaving the giant projectile hurtling at them at unfathomable speed.

Keith was the one who acted, letting out a panicked squeal that she had never heard from him before, throwing up a hand instinctively as if that might shield them from the danger. The hand didn’t, but the flash of purple light that arced out in front of them did, taking the brunt of the impact.

When the dust settled, the small circle of ground they were all huddled on was the only spot untouched. Keith was looking at his hands like he’d never seen them before.

“Okay, that was kind of cool,” Pidge admitted.

“It’s also not fair!” Lance complained. “I’ve been practicing for months, you’re exposed to how druidism works for five seconds and you can do that?”

“I guess that settles once and for all which one of us is the best,” Keith answered.

One would have thought somebody had kicked Lance in a soft spot with the noise he made. Pidge had seen that look on his face before, back in the beginning when they’d first become Paladins.

Apparently, the rivalry was back on.

“Fight later, kids,” Adam said warningly. “Worry about staying alive right now. Is it over?”

Most of the noise had stopped, and so had the shaking of the ground. Pidge braved pulling herself up from the ground to creep forward and peek around Lance’s shield.

Green was down, and bad. She lay in the small crater where she’d been thrown, a huge tear in her side throwing dangerous-looking sparks. Black was badly damaged and so was Blue, the former lying on his back out in the desert and the latter unmoving on her side. Yellow and Red were prowling slowly around their fallen opponent, the twisted metal of their broken legs and ruptured hulls making blood-curdling shrieking sounds caused by friction.

The mech wasn’t moving. They had brought it down, just like the other two.

“I hope she doesn’t have any more of those things,” Pidge groaned, wiping a mix of dirt and blood from her cheek. “With what we had to go through just to survive these three, I don’t think we can win another fight like this.”

“I don’t want to _have_ another fight like this,” Hunk answered. “Can we take a vote and just decide that this is it? This is as bad as it’s allowed to get, the war’s officially cancelled?”

A loud beep sounded from Pidge’s wrist as her monitor lit up, projecting up in front of her in glaring red. She knew what she was looking at immediately, and from the way Yellow and Red suddenly started to move she knew all of the Lions had sensed the same thing.

The cockpit hadn’t been completely destroyed. The pilot—or rather, the parasite and its host—were still functioning. Enough to activate the mech’s self-destruct mechanism.

“Oh no,” Pidge squeaked. “No, no, no!”

“Can they do this alone?” Keith asked desperately, looking over to where Yellow and Red were grabbing the mech and attempting to lift it. “It took all five Lions last time, with us in the pilot seats to power them.”

“I don’t think so,” Hunk bit his lip. “It’s too big and they’re too low on juice, they can barely get it in the air.”

“There’s no way they’re getting that up in the atmosphere in time,” Lance whispered. “That thing’s going to turn this whole planet into gravel!”

Pidge’s heart leapt into her throat as she watched. Blue and Black were moving slightly, clearly trying to come back online enough to help, but they had been damaged too much and didn’t have enough charge left to alchemically shift away the damage. Green was down completely, not moving at all, only her most basic scanning functions even working.

The two struggling Lions were almost knocked out of the air by the sudden appearance of a fast-moving black streak. Kuro’s mech grabbed the enemy one and launched straight upward, dramatically slowed by the damage it had taken but still moving faster and with more power than Yellow and Red. Pidge’s eyes darted back and forth between the countdown at her wrist and the moving shape in the sky.

Ten seconds. Five seconds. Three seconds.

“He’s not going to make it,” Keith realized. “He’s still miles from the shield.”

One second. Zero.

Kuro’s wings opened fully, quickly folding closed around the enemy mech, and then the sky was lit with what looked like an exploding atomic bomb. The resulting shockwave hit them a second later, throwing them across the chipped and broken tarmac, and Pidge felt the wind knocked out of her again as she slammed her gut into something hard.

She waited for the pain to subside, the loss of sensation that would come with death, sure in that instant that the entire planet was being destroyed. What she got was a burning in her lungs and a ringing in her ears. When she was no longer blinded by light, everything was blurry.

There was no sound but the high-pitched one that seemed to drill itself into her eardrums, and she was seeing double. But she was seeing double of a solid planet, still arguably in one piece.

Pidge forced herself to sit up, and a second later saw Lance crawling over to flop down beside her. Keith was a few yards away, pushing himself over to lay on his back, touching his chest and stomach as if to assure himself he was still there. Hunk and Adam slowly pushed themselves up off the ground, all five of them covered in blood and dirt and a coating of dust from final fight.

Behind them, the Garrison base stood solid and true behind its particle barrier, everyone inside of it safe from the massive explosion in the sky. And up above, lit by the friction of reentry into the lower atmosphere, the remains of the two mechs rained down like shooting stars.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second of two very long chapters. I've been trying to keep the size of these things down, but I didn't want these two fights to drag on with continuous cliffhangers and decided to just do the Earth battle and Colony battle each in a single chapter.
> 
> We're working our way toward the end! Just a few more small bumps in the road before we're ready for the final stage of the story!

The striker jostled to a halt, the quiet hum of its engines cutting off and its lights going dim as it was shut down from the outside. For a few tense minutes, James and Nikolaev sat in the dark in silence, waiting to find out if they were about to be caught.

But nobody boarded the striker, or even tried to enter. They were probably now one of the hundreds of remaining strikers lined up in the launching bay, ignored by those doing their jobs. Eventually Nikolaev let out a little cough and stretched out his legs and uncurling from the little ball he’d been sitting in.

“So,” James glanced over as Nikolaev spoke. “We’re in the middle of a planet-wide attack, miles from our allies, on board a Galra cruiser.”

“Yes,” James agreed.

“Secretly stowed away,” Nikolaev added. “Surrounded by the dumbest that the Galra have to offer.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, they’re faction Galra,” Nikolaev reasoned. “Not Imperials. The factions split off because they were the less rational, more violent types. And even then they couldn’t form a solid force to confront the Imperial army, they fractured.”

“Okay, so they’re more violent and probably not very logical,” James supposed.

“And back on the Atlas, where do we put our smartest people?” Nikolaev asked.

James thought about that for a second.

“Pilots,” he answered. “Not to brag. Officers. Scientists. The upper decks and the labs.”

“And where do we put the people who might not be that bright, but are still hard-working good guys we need to keep the smarter people running?”

“Maintenance,” James answered, now understanding what Nikolaev meant. “Loading. Infantry training, but we try to avoid putting boots on the ground as a general rule.”

“Yeah,” Nikolaev agreed. “Doesn’t matter who owns the ship, you’re not going to find officers and scientists down in the loading docks and launching bays. So, we’ve been politely invited onto an enemy ship and dropped down in with the rank and file…half of whom hate their bosses and only stay because they’re in too deep to go back to the empire. I doubt they’re treated well enough here to do anything but keep their heads down and do their jobs.”

“You’ve got a point,” James supposed.

They both fell quiet again. His back hurt, and so did the couple of laser burns he had, but he was still conscious so apparently none of that was fatal. Nikolaev was still coughing on occasion, but the worst of the fits had subsided now that he wasn’t exerting himself too much.

They were not in any condition for a fight…but maybe there didn’t need to be any fighting.

“We could just wait in here until the next round of strikers is launched and just leave with them, but this feels like the kind of opportunity that begs for some problems to be caused,” James decided after a minute.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Nikolaev asked.

“Maybe ones that end in explosions.”

“Well, I mean, if nothing explodes, is it even really a problem?” Nikolaev wondered.

They sat still for another minute, both debating the wisdom of doing anything other than staying put. They could get out of here if they were patient, but the Atlas and cruiser needed all the help they could get. If even one of these enemy cruisers could be taken down somehow, it meant hundreds of strikers that didn’t have to be dealt with. Maybe thousands, depending on how many pilots they had here.

They both climbed to their feet at the same time, creeping to the airlock as one. Nikolaev opened the inner lock so they could look out the window of the outer, taking stock of their position.

The striker was near an inner wall, about four yards out. Nobody seemed to be coming and going back here.

James opened the outer lock and carefully poked his head out. A quick look back and forth told him that although he could hear plenty of people moving around, there wasn’t much reason for them to be over here. He looked around, hardly believing his luck when he saw a lanky, one-eyed Galra boredly unpacking crates two strikers down. One of the open crates had flight suits that matched the one he was wearing.

“Stay here,” James whispered, retrieving his dropped helmet. “I’ll be right back.”

He quietly left the striker, freezing when he heard footsteps walking by. A hefty Galra with a limp walked right past his striker, going over to a spot on the wall where some clipboards were hanging and taking one down. James panicked and pulled the helmet on, standing up as tall as he could, and the Galra turned around and walked right back past him without looking twice.

James let out a breath, glancing back at Nikolaev. The other man shrugged, and James motioned for him to remain out of sight.

Adam had told him that the best way to go wherever he wanted was to pretend he belonged there. That had been on a faction outpost, surrounded by Galra just like these. James told himself that there would be others here who stood out, aliens of all types who had been recruited to do the more grueling work. He would not be the only one who looked different, and he wouldn’t be the only one using a translator.

His legs felt like they would buckle as he reached the man unloading the crates. He forced himself to clear his throat loudly and stand as casually as possible.

“Hey, uh, just wondering,” he said when the Galra looked up. “Where can I get a couple of those flight suits? My partner and I just joined up, we’ve been using these ones we stole back during the Earth invasion but they’re kind of beat up these days.”

The Galra raised an eyebrow. He slowly looked James up and down, and James knew he was caught. There was no way anybody was going to buy what he’d just said. He tensed, ready to jump over the crates and take the man down before he sounded the alarm.

“Fire of Purification idiots,” the Galra huffed instead of calling for guards. “Didn’t know any of you were even still alive after that shitshow Sendak finally lost his over-bloated head.”

“Er…he did have a very big head,” James agreed. “It…it was mostly ears.”

The Galra sniffed and reached into the open crate, pulling out two flight suits. They were both neatly packaged with helmets, which meant they were probably stolen from an Imperial shipment. These guys didn’t look like the type of people who special ordered uniforms.

“Get your asses suited up and over to the Taskmaster,” the Galra grunted, throwing the two flight suits at him. James caught them, nearly fumbling and dropping them. “We’re in the middle of trying to take out an emperor, we don’t need you twiddling your thumbs instead of manning the guns.”

James almost said “yes sir,” but he highly doubted any of the grunts here threw around respect like that. Instead he made a scoffing noise and waited for the Galra to go back to what he was doing, then quickly made himself scarce. He darted back to the striker, making sure nobody was looking as he slipped inside.

“Here,” he tossed one to Nikolaev and started stripping off his torn-up armor. “Wait until I finish and go outside, then change alone. If you really don’t want to spread what you’ve got around here, you need to make sure you’re fully covered whenever someone’s around.”

“Where did you get these?” Nikolaev asked, turning over the package he’d been given.

“I just went over to the guy and asked for them,” James answered, wincing as he peeled his armor away from sore skin and started pulling on the fresh flight suit. “If anyone asks, we ditched out on Sendak right before the Paladins came back and just joined up with these guys.”

“Sure,” Nikolaev tore open the package of his own flight suit. “And who are these guys again?”

“Uh, good question. They have some kind of a black bird painted out there on the wall.”

“Great!” Nikolaev enthused. “I have no idea what that means.”

James gave him an annoyed look in return for his sarcasm, sealing the flight suit into place. He pulled on the new, fabric helmet, pleased to feel the neck clamp click properly into place, and darkened the visor to hide his face. Once his torn-up armor was stowed away in an empty compartment, he let himself back out of the striker.

The few minutes it took Nikolaev to change felt like forever. James was careful to keep out of view of the Galra who’d given him the flight suits, not wanting to get yelled at for still dawdling instead of being out in the bay following orders. When the other soldier joined him he was moving slowly, having expended so much more energy than he should have already.

“Maybe we really should just stay here,” James suggested. “And leave as soon as we get a chance.”

“No, we’re here and they need all the help they can get,” Nikolaev replied. “Besides, I think I know how we can take some strain off our ships.”

“Yeah?”

“The control tower is up there,” Nikolaev answered, pointing up to a room at the far side of the hangar that overlooked everything going on down here. “That’s where whoever brought us in is stationed.”

“Okay,” James agreed. “What about it?”

“It won’t be high security,” Nikolaev said. “They’re on a ship in the sky, they’re not going to see us coming. Probably only a supervisor and a controller, two controllers max. If we take them out, we can use the auto landing to bring strikers up from our cruiser with our soldiers in them.”

“Oh!” James saw what he meant now. “Like the Trojan Horse!”

“Yes,” Nikolaev said after a slight pause. “Because that is a thing I know about.”

“You don’t know about the Trojan Horse?” James asked flatly. “They teach you that in grade school.”

“Of course I know about it,” Nikolaev scoffed. “I just said I did. Trojans. Horses. Pfft, what is there not to know?”

Niko knew the inner workings of Galra ships, but didn’t know about such a simple history fact as the Trojan Horse. James was beginning to wonder what planet this guy had actually been born on. Had his parents raised him in a cave?

“Okay, forget the horse,” James waved that off. “Would the auto landing keep them safe from enemy fire?”

“Strikers come and go, if you break one you have to replace it,” Nikolaev answered. “So there’s a process for assigning the cruiser ID to it. The shields for all strikers on this ship are powered by the cruiser’s main shields as well. If we assign this ship’s ID to any strikers we bring up, they’ll be identified as allies to all the other attackers and be covered by this ship’s shielding.”

“Are you serious?” James asked, imagining the possibilities. “That’s awesome! It’s exactly what we need!”

“We just have to get up to that control room,” Nikolaev warned. “How hard can it really be?”

* * * * * * * * * *

“The atmosphere bubble is gone!”

Veronica’s exclamation distracted Allura, making her take a heavy hit from one of the three strikers on her tail. They had been well above the planet for some time now, doing their best to keep the fight as far from the colony as possible. Veronica had just dived back down toward the surface to lose some followers, which was probably how she’d noticed.

Allura ran her scanners. Sure enough, the membrane that had been holding in the colony’s little bit of atmosphere was gone, and any breathable air had gone with it.

“The power station is gone,” she announced, shifting her scan. “And our crystal with it.”

“Maybe not,” Romelle said hopefully. “James is out there.”

“What!?”

“I dropped him off before I joined you,” Romelle said quickly, sounding apologetic. “He was working with Ziran, so he knew how to get the crystal out safely without blowing anything up. I’m sure he got to it and got out in time.”

She didn’t sound so sure, and the sharp intake of breath from Veronica said she didn’t believe he had walked away from the mess down there either. For her part, Allura wanted to believe he had made it out in one piece, but the extent of the destruction…

“James is very resourceful,” was all Allura said.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have time for what-ifs, and as much as she wanted to get down there and search the rubble, Sincline was the only weapon they had in the sky right now. The Atlas couldn’t fire, that would sap its energy reserves too much, so the only backup they had was the grounded cruiser.

To make matters worse, they had picked up an SOS sent from Earth shortly after Laurentia had put everything into motion. They were under attack from three of Honerva’s mechs, with no shield in place to stop more from potentially coming. Allura only hoped that when this was over, there was still an Earth to go back to. She had faith in the original Paladins, and in Adam, but in all of them together…not so much just yet.

“We need a plan,” Veronica broke into her thoughts, zooming upward past her with three strikers on her tail. Allura opened fire, knocking two of them out of the sky. “If we form Sincline, we give them all a single target to aim for. But all we can do while we’re separate is divide and shoot down enemy ships. Which would be fine, if more didn’t keep on coming.”

“At this point, for now we just keep trying to buy time,” Allura grit her teeth as she took fire to her port side. “The Lorelia made a run for some balmera crystals. With Coran at their side I know they’ll be successful…we just have to hold down the fort until they get back and get the Atlas in the air.”

“But what’s that going to do?” Romelle asked. “The Atlas is a heavy-duty ship, I know…and sure, Sincline can match Voltron. And a warship and a mech might have taken out Sendak’s fleet, but we’re up against more than one faction here. Everybody who wants the Empire to fall completely is here trying to take out Lotor.”

“They all think they’ll get a shot at taking his place when another kral zera is held,” Allura said bitterly. “Which means we have to do anything we can, even if it ends up being not enough. If anyone else takes the Galra throne, they’ll immediately go after the Coalition.”

She was not going to let the Galra Empire begin expanding again. For ten thousand years she had slept, hidden away with most of the Lions, allowing Honerva’s reach to get this far. The failings of the past needed to be corrected.

“Unfortunately, handing the Emperor over may be exactly what needs to be done,” Lotor’s voice said softly in her ear, reminding her that they were sharing a private line. He had been quiet for most of this fight and she had forgotten he was listening. “We need to buy time for the Lorelia to return. Handing myself over in return for a ceasefire will buy us that time.”

Allura turned off her come lines to the others, doing a barrel roll to escape from direct fire and punching the accelerator to take off east, losing the bulk of her tailing enemies.

“Absolutely not,” she refused. “I’m not about to just hand you over to save ourselves. And even if I was willing to do that, none of these quiznacking deckelthompers would keep their word and not start shooting as soon as they had you.”

“Language,” Lotor said mildly. “I’m aware they wouldn’t keep their word, but we might not need them to. We’d only need them to stop firing on us long enough for the Lorelia to return.”

“And once they have you?” Allura prompted. Lotor suggested a lot of dumb things, as men were wont to do, but it was usually less dangerously dumb things, like turning garlic bread and spaghetti into a sandwich and calling it a sandgetti. This was a little beyond the usual. “If they don’t kill you outright, which there’s at least a twenty percent chance they do, they’re going to haul you off for a grand spectacle execution. What if we can’t get you back before they jump you out of here and deep into enemy space?”

“Then it’s the weight of my one life against the thousands of colonists and Atlas crew who would potentially be saved,” Lotor answered. “As well as your life, which is worth more to me than mine.”

Allura flipped Opal, losing the last tailing striker and heading back toward the main fight. There was something in Lotor’s voice that she couldn’t put her finger on, the dogfight she was involved in taking up too much of her attention for her to read him as easily as she normally would have. All she could really pick out was that he did not sound terribly sacrificial.

“You know something,” she accused. “You have something up your sleeve, what is it?”

“The phrase “up my sleeve” makes me sound like I’m doing something wrong.”

“What is it?” Allura insisted.

“Nothing solid,” Lotor admitted. “I have a message from Kuro that’s given me a bit of insight into some things. It’s given me reason to believe that Earth might be safe, and that I might be able to ensure the colonists are as well. But finding out hinges on me getting onto one of those cruisers.”

Allura took a deep breath, clenching her teeth. It didn’t sound like he had anything more than a hunch, and yet he basically wanted to be handed over to the enemy on a silver platter. She wasn’t willing to risk that.

“It’s not happening,” she said firmly. “Once you’re on a cruiser, there’s no way for us to get you back if something goes wrong.”

“We don’t really have a choice,” Lotor answered evenly. “I know you don’t like it, Love, and your feelings matter no less than mine. But more ships keep arriving, and the time we can keep up our shields dwindles faster with every added cannon.”

“We’ll continue to hold the line,” Allura insisted. “For as long as we can, nobody gets sacrificed as long as there’s any other option.”

Another cruiser jumped in directly in front of her, forcing her to turn Opal sharply to avoid a collision. She had to spiral downward as several more squadrons of strikers were released, adding to the squall of ships already in the sky. Like the mythological Earth beast, every one they cut down had two arrive in its place, and the Sincline ships were becoming less and less able to cover their allies on the ground against the greater numbers.

As Allura dodged and rolled, trying to find space in the crowded sky to pull back up, her sensors warned that three more arrivals had just jumped into the atmosphere. But these were not Galra ships, they read as being Altean, and Allura felt the ripple of a closing wormhole.

“Veronica! Romelle!” She called, slapping her other lines back on. “Does anybody have eyes on the last three ships to arrive? Is the Lorelia back?”

“I do,” Romelle replied, her voice meek. “And you’re not going to like it.”

The bottom corner of Allura’s screen filled with the view from Jade, a span of the atmosphere up above the Galra fleets. Two Altean mechs hovered there, a nightmare in and of themselves, but what they were flanking was even worse. Lotor’s old cruiser, now Honerva’s vessel, loomed up large on the screen.

“Quiznack,” Allura whispered.

This wasn’t good. Already they were in dire straits, with little left but prayers, and now any hope those prayers might have brought were dashed. But instead of being fearful, Allura felt a sudden flash of anger. This feeling of hopelessness, of having no way out, it tore at wounds that were still open and bleeding, brought back the feelings she associated with watching her home planet die.

“Allura, Romelle, Veronica,” Lotor called urgently. “Get back. Get away from that ship, quickly.”

“No,” Allura ground out through clenched teeth, turning Opal upward.

“She’s here for me!” Lotor insisted. “Don’t put yourself in her way!”

“Well she can’t have you!” Allura shot back. “I’m not going to let this witch take anyone else from me, ever.”

“Veronica,” she heard Romelle say warningly.

“I’m right here.”

Allura broke through a swarm of strikers and into open sky, and abruptly found Jade and Carnelian at her sides. They were just ahead of her and slowly closed in, forcing her to slow down.

“What are you doing!?” She demanded.

“Maybe she’s here for Lotor,” Veronica supposed. “But maybe she’s here for you. You held your own against her back on Colony One, and she won’t have forgotten it. You flying right into her claws would be a gift.”

Allura gave a noise of irritation and brought Opal to a stop, knowing Veronica was right. She couldn’t sacrifice one of the Sincline ships, and with it their ability to form the Sincline mech, by attacking uncontrolled out of anger. Honerva was well protected by her two mechs, and the ancients only knew how many druids she had on that ship with her.

She would get her chance to face off with the witch again eventually, she could wait.

A flash of light reinforced her decision, as another wormhole opened up and three more mechs arrived to join the first two. The odds began to look worse and worse.

“Retreat behind the shield,” Allura said tersely, reversing and letting Opal fall back down toward the ground and causing the strikers trailing her to scatter. “Get out of range, we’ll figure out our next move from there.”

Jade and Carnelian followed, dropping down in her wake. It was a straight shot down to the cruiser and Atlas, and with the speed of the Sincline ships they should have made it easily. But Allura was only halfway there when something rammed Opal, hard, and sent her careening off course. She slammed into two strikers that were coming up on her right, her screen flashing with a warning that debris was lodged in one of the delicate intakes.

She threw a thruster into reverse function, blasting the smoking bit of metal out to clear the blockage, and pulled herself out of freefall just before slamming into the ground. But as she tried to turn back toward the cruiser she had to suddenly grind to a halt when she found her way blocked by one of the Altean mechs.

A quick scan of the sky found two more across the frozen wasteland, between Romelle and Veronica. Neither of them were attacking at the moment, but that didn’t make her feel any better.

“Are you guys all right?” Romelle asked. “I almost crashed into a cruiser.”

“One of those things hit you, too?” Allura asked, irritably rubbing her shoulder where her harness had dug into her skin.

“Yeah, two more hit me and Romelle after the first one hit you,” Veronica answered. “They’re not attacking, but they won’t let Romelle and I get close.”

“She’s ordered them to keep us from forming Sincline,” Allura said. She took that chance to scan the mech in front of her, hovering still. She had a feeling that it wasn’t going to let her get back to the shield. “We have to get around that. The combined Sincline is practically the only real defense we have at this point.”

“Do _not _fire,” Lotor reminded them all. “And keep your distance. One of the things I found out is that these battle Komars can recharge on kinetic energy and not just the quintessence of energy weapons.”

“Komar,” Allura repeated. “That’s the name of the device Haggar was using when Voltron first fought Zarkon’s lich. Pidge and I thought she might have salvaged some of that technology, but we were never able to safely power them up enough to confirm it.”

She didn’t think she would ever forget that day, even when all of her other memories faded. The first day she personally went up against Haggar, winning only because she finally understood what her mentors had been trying to teach her and all the alchemical theory drilled into her head had finally clicked into place. The day Antok died, ostensibly on her watch, murdered by a druid. The day Shiro died, sacrificing himself in a war none of the Paladins had been required to take part in.

Even if she hadn’t personally done much research on the mechs, unable to activate such dangerous machinery on a crippled world recovering from war, she remembered the Komar. The planet killer, developed to suck the quintessence out of anything put into its path for the greed of an empire’s unquenchable thirst for more and more power.

“The original Komar was strictly for quintessence,” Lotor replied. “When I was first summoned back to the empire they were trying to repair it, but I had the project scrapped. When I began researching the mechs I wasn’t sure, but I found they run at full power on druidic energy. Just like the Komar.”

“So if those are druids in the pilot capsules instead of Altean kids, these things are going to tear right through us,” Veronica deduced.

“It’s a definite concern,” Lotor answered. “But aside from that, even if the pilots aren’t so great at druidically activating the quintessence drain, they can still generate power from physical impacts and throw it back at you.”

“These things get worse and worse every time I see them,” Romelle marveled.

“As much as I want you guys back under these shields, I don’t think it’s safe for you with those things here,” Shiro chimed in. He had been silent through the rest of the exchange, alone on the bridge of the Atlas, and now he sounded somber. “The one piloted by Ariella took out our shields easily. These five will cut through them like a hot knife through butter. I think…we may have to consider sending you three into retreat.”

“Retreat where?” Veronica scoffed. “You want us to hide in the lava tubes?”

“I want you to leave,” Shiro replied, his voice harsh and all trace of friendliness gone, replaced by the severity of a Captain in a tight spot. “Honerva cannot take Sincline. I’m willing to self-destruct the Atlas before she can take it, if it comes down to it, but you’re still capable of escaping. You can jump into the quintessence field and get away from the planet safely.”

“You want the three of us to leave everyone behind?” Allura asked, aghast. “To potentially be killed rather than being taken alive! Absolutely not!”

“He’s right,” Lotor murmured, less hardness but still just as serious. “She’s got to be running out of material by now to make more of these Komar mechs, but if she takes this planet then she also takes its psyferite. Voltron and Sincline are the only defenses the Coalition has, unless we can get the Komari back on Earth fixed and working. This is a lost battle, Allura, you can’t stay here and risk Sincline being taken.”

This was a nightmare. It was Altea all over again, she was being sent to safety while everyone she should be protecting died. That was the reality here, the Captains of the ships below had made the decision to kill everyone aboard their ships if the enemy broke through their defenses. It was a harsh truth that death was a mercy in the face of what would await them otherwise, but she could not believe she had come ten thousand years and several galaxies away from Altea only to relive its final day.

“_Attention Coalition ships_,” a raspy voice came over her comm line, pulling her attention up to Honerva’s cruiser. It wasn’t her, it sounded like a man. Or at least, what had once been a man. “_Surrender Emperor Lotor and Princess Allura, and we will allow safe passage away from this planet_.”

Veronica gave her an “I told you so” look onscreen, but Allura ignored it. She had already roundaboutly admitted the other woman was right, she wasn’t going to say it out loud.

“They’re not going to let anyone walk away,” Romelle whispered. “There’s no way.”

“Of course they’re not,” Allura agreed. “But they’re broadcasting on an open channel so everyone on both ships can hear, probably hoping they’re desperate enough to believe it.”

Lotor’s face filled her screen then, responding on the same open channel. He was still on the cruiser’s bridge, his arms crossed and leaning back against the Captain’s dais. Everyone else had been ordered out of view, probably to keep the enemy from picking out any other specific targets.

“You could have just called the bridge line,” Lotor said dryly, agreeing with Allura’s assessment and calling Honerva’s bluff. “Lying to everyone listening isn’t going to get you any farther than simply lying to me.”

Honerva’s cruiser responded. Lotor’s image was joined by a view of the other ship’s bridge, where two Altean men sat at the main control console with Honerva seated behind them. The two Alteans were pale, looking more like thin skin stretched over skeletons than people, their eyes completely black and void.

Even from this view, Allura could see that the bridge was rotting away. Just like Curtis and Kuro had described the room where the bodies had been kept, everything these…_things_ touched was rusting and falling to decay.

“You will surrender,” one of them said, the way his mouth moved giving Allura chills. It looked so unnatural, like a puppet being controlled by someone with very little experience in human emotion. “You and the Princess will exit your ships and allow yourselves to be collected by a representative of Empress Honerva.”

“We will?” Lotor asked. “That’s very kind of us.”

“Sarcasm will do nothing to improve your position,” the Altean replied. “You have no other choice but to comply if you wish the survival of those under your command.”

“Unfortunately, there are two problems with your proposal,” Lotor answered. “The first is that I don’t believe for a second that you’ll let anyone go. The second is that Allura isn’t on this mission with me.”

There was a pause. Neither of the druids moved, but Allura still got the sense there was communication happening that she wasn’t privy to.

“Who pilots the lead Sincline ship?” The druid asked after a moment.

That question gave Lotor pause and Allura held her breath, uncertain of what Honerva would do upon catching Lotor in a blatant and brazen lie. He stared the druid down, absently flicking the fingernails of one hand as if considering the question.

“My General, obviously,” he said finally, pitching his tone as if he were wondering why they didn’t already know that. “Acxa pilots it in _Queen_ Allura’s absence. As a leader of the Coalition, I’m sure you didn’t expect Her Majesty to be on a personal mission like this.”

“You continue to speak flippantly,” the second druid was no less creepy than the first when he spoke. “You are in no position to do so.”

There was another pause for that odd, wordless communication. Honerva seemed almost a statue, if Allura hadn’t seen her eyes move once or twice she would have assumed she wasn’t living.

“You speak the truth, the White One isn’t present,” the first druid said. “You will exit your ship alone and allow yourself to be collected.”

The White One. Allura could only assume they meant the White Lion. The entity had been in the Zero crystal during the altercation on Colony One, and had been what had won the battle for them in the end. But anyone who had been present out at the power station knew that the White Lion was no longer in the crystal…it was being carried by Shiro now, laying quiet and, for the most part, dormant.

Honerva had no idea what the White Lion felt like, Allura realized. She could probably sense her druids, but none of these other entities. She hadn’t realized one was hitching a ride with Lance until it had come out in the fight, and didn’t know the White Lion was currently on the Atlas. She was attributing the loud, easily read power of the Infinite Zero crystal to her opponent and did not realize it was still right under her nose.

Perhaps that was a blessing. Allura didn’t know how powerful this thing truly was, but Honerva wanted it surrendered. She was definitely wary.

“Allura,” Romelle whispered suddenly. “Mute your other comm lines, I have something to put through to you.”

“Now?” Allura murmured, looking warily at the Komari that still hovered threateningly in front of her, quietly turning off her main lines. “Send it.”

“Okay, they’re connected,” Romelle spoke a little louder this time, but still kept her voice low. “Go ahead and tell them.”

“Hey,” a male voice greeted. “It’s Griffin.”

“James!” Allura and Veronica both blurted out in relief. Allura allowed herself to feel the tiniest spark of happiness at the small bright spot in this dark time. “Are you all right? Where are you?”

“I’m on one of the faction cruisers,” James answered, opening the visuals now that he was connected. “It’s a long story.”

He looked like hell. There was no getting around it, he had definitely been in that power station during the collapse and she would not believe otherwise. His face was black and blue and he had deep cuts and scratches on every bit of skin she could see, there was little doubt the flesh covered by the Galra flight suit he wore was just as bad.

“Your idiot boyfriend isn’t going to hand himself over to the Queen of the Damned up there, is he?” James asked. “I’ve been watching this feed and he looks like he’s itching to do something dumb.”

“You’re on an enemy Galra cruiser after going into a war target power station _by yourself,_” Allura pointed out. “He’s not the only idiot here.”

“I’m not alone,” was the only defense James gave.

“_They don’t even get paid in GAC!_” Another male voice, one that was familiar but that Allura couldn’t place, yelled from somewhere out of view. “_The benefits on this ship are trash!_”

“What in the system is going on up there?” Allura asked, bewildered.

“Oh, there’s about to be a mutiny,” James answered. “That’s another long story. Look, the bottom line is, if your boy toy can distract everyone with even a temporary cease-fire by making it seem like he’s going to surrender, I can get some of our soldiers up onto this ship by calling up their strikers. It’s about to be chaos up here, taking control of this thing with a small but trained force is completely doable.”

“Taking over one cruiser in a faction may let us take out the whole faction,” Veronica pointed out. “Allied ships all share a signal, don’t they? So they’re all protected under a pooled shield system and safe from friendly fire.”

“They are,” Allura nodded, opening the screen on her helmet to take a deep, steadying breath.

This…was a chance. There were a lot of factions out here, but getting some people into even one of those cruisers could be a big deal. Turn one faction on another, start a fight among them all, it was a slim chance but one was there.

“If I agree to your terms, how can I be sure you’ll truly let these people go?”

Lotor had continued to volley back and forth with the druids, but now his words drew her attention back into the conversation. She almost screamed at him to sit down and not open his mouth again, but knew if she let them see she was there they would be far more on guard with Lotor for further lies.

The enemy’s response wasn’t verbal. The Komar mech in front of her lashed out without any warning, slamming the staff it carried into Opal’s hull and sending a shockwave running through the ship Allura felt even in the insulated cockpit.

She slammed her thrusters in reverse and pulled away, then shot upward to put some distance between her and the attacking Komari, but the mech was fast. Allura quickly turned the thrusters, flipping Opal around on a dime and opening fire at her trailing opponent, but the mech dodged and rolled with a graceful ease. It slammed the ship again, making Allura let out a string of curses as she cut the engine and let gravity pull her down toward the ground.

Halfway there she put power back into the ship, pulling up and only barely avoiding another impact. Abruptly, the Komari stopped attacking.

“We’re not giving you a choice,” the druid’s voice came over the line again. “Act according to our terms or we will dismantle your defenders’ ships and the pilots inside, and then come for you ourselves.”

“Don’t do it,” Allura warned, knowing Lotor couldn’t hear her with her lines muted. He didn’t move from where he languidly stood, but she could see his jaw tensing and knew he was going to give in because of her.

“Very well.” He said it airily, as if he were simply agreeing to work a neighbor into his busy schedule for tea and not potentially setting himself up to be publicly executed in Galra space. “Thirty doboshes.”

“Fifteen,” the druid countered. “No more.’

Lotor cut off his line without an answer, giving no indication as to his opinion on that matter. Allura immediately called into the ship.

“Sit tight,” he said as soon as he opened the private line, not even giving her a chance to rage. “I’ll handle this.”

“You’ll _handle_ this?” Allura sputtered.

Halfway through her statement, she heard the click as Lotor hung up on her. If Honerva showing up hadn’t sent her into a stroke-inducing rage, that certainly did.

“You son of a _bitch_!” She screamed into the dead line. “You better hope you die on their ship, because if you don’t I’m going to _kill you_!”

“I’m sure she means that with love,” she heard Veronica murmur to Romelle.

“James, are you still there?” Allura asked sharply.

“Not if you’re killing people,” James answered uncertainly. She ignored the quip.

“My idiot boyfriend is going to attempt to get himself on one of those cruisers because for some reason he believes there’s something he can do up there,” she ground out. “Are you certain you can bring up our soldiers under cover of that exchange?”

“This place is becoming pure chaos, I can probably do anything I want,” James answered. “Can you put me through to Acxa to coordinate? Their communications are closed against these enemy cruisers.”

“Veronica, call into Acxa,” Allura ordered. “Get James patched through. When everything goes down, be prepared to lose the Komari and merge, we can only dip into the quintessence field in mech form.”

“Are we going to make a run for it like Shiro and Lotor said?” Romelle asked worriedly.

“Absolutely not,” Allura promised. “And we need to watch how many times we go in and out. But if we’re careful, we might be able to use that advantage to take out some of these ships.”

It wasn’t going to be easy, not when Honerva knew Sincline’s capabilities and would be wary and prepared, but if James’ plan failed it might be the only chance they had.

* * * * * * * * * *

Shiro sat in what was usually Coran’s seat, watching the events play out in front of him with a growing sense of unease. He was alone on the bridge of his ship, the only member of its crew who didn’t have something active to do.

Nikolaev was in the medical bay, Coran was on a mission, Veronica was in the sky, Mitch was running the Garrison, Curtis…he didn’t want to think about Curtis. Standing alone, the Captain of a ship, with thousands of souls in his care, was not how he’d ever seen his life heading.

Especially not to an end like this. The sky was absolutely dark with enemy ships, the Atlas’ particle barrier was starting to waver, the ship couldn’t get off the ground and the cruiser it had accompanied could in no way outrun the enemy even if the Alteans were willing to leave their human rescuers behind.

Shiro knew what that meant. He had seen it personally in his own experience and had heard the stories upon Earth’s release from Galra occupation. The people on these ships wouldn’t simply be killed, they would be taken prisoner. Families separated as some were sent to do grueling work as slaves and others were tortured for fun. Some would even be sent out to arenas, to be murdered in front of audiences for sport.

“This is not how I envisioned ending this expedition.”

Lotor’s soft voice over the comm echoed Shiro’s thoughts. He could hear in the inflection that the other man was walking, probably on his way to leave the ship.

“Me neither,” he agreed, sitting back in his seat. “It doesn’t look good, does it?”

“It doesn’t.” The background noise on Lotor’s line stopped, as if he’d entered an elevator alone. “You’re going to destroy your ship if they breach the shields?”

“Do I have a choice?” Shiro asked heavily. “A few seconds of shock and then it’s over, that’s better than what they’re looking at otherwise. Give me another option. Give me _any_ other option besides letting these people fall into enemy hands.”

“Griffin is on one of those cruisers,” Lotor answered. The hum of the elevator stopped, but he didn’t leave the quiet privacy. “The strikers on this ship are now being manned and prepared to launch. He believes that he can bring them up during the distraction caused by me handing myself over.”

That was a surprise to hear. James had gone AWOL at the beginning of the fight, and Nadia hadn’t been able to tell Shiro where he’d gone. How he’d gotten up to that cruiser was a very good question, but ultimately not as important as the fact that he was there.

“You’re the expert on Galra technology,” Shiro said. “If we take one of those cruisers, what are we looking at?”

“We’re looking at our pilots maybe getting out of here alive,” Lotor answered bluntly. “Not much else. There are at least five factions up in the sky, if we take one of their cruisers we may be able to open fire on another and start a fight that will distract two. That still leaves a lot of ships in the sky that we just don’t have the power to handle. That was the point of this being a stealth mission instead of bringing a whole Coalition fleet.”

So, not much hope.

“Allura will do what she has to when things go south,” Shiro said after a moment. “She’ll hold out as long as she can, but in the end she’ll take Romelle and Veronica and go if she has to. The same with any soldiers we can get up onto one of those cruisers. Once there’s no ships down here to come back to, they’ll do their best to escape.”

“There’s something else.”

Shiro glanced up as an alert came up on his console, notifying him that a file had been received.

“Your…brother prepared this for me,” Lotor said hesitantly. “Given the nature of what it contains, it’s an extreme breach of trust for me to share it, but under the circumstances I don’t have a choice. Tell me what you think. Preferably quickly, I can’t hold off on leaving the ship for too much longer.”

Shiro opened the file, bringing up a video on his screen. It was from Ryou, filmed in the small sitting area Shiro recognized as being in Curtis’ basement.

He watched the video all the way through, and by the end he found himself unable to say anything.

It had started innocently enough, just some last words from a man who was leaving town, then turned into a wild ride Shiro wasn’t even sure he really comprehended. By the time stamp it lasted less than ten minutes, but with the way Shiro’s brain felt it might as well have been a week-long lecture.

And that was beside the fact that Ryou wasn’t as human as they had believed. Shiro had suspected he was hiding some things, everyone had their secrets, but nothing on this scale.

“I don’t…” Shiro tried to make his mouth work, knowing Lotor was still on the line and that time was running short. “Is he saying you’re one of Honerva’s first experiments?”

“It fits, doesn’t it?” Lotor asked. “I always suspected she had done something, that there was a reason I’m immune to overexposure and have such a naturally long lifespan. Why I understand and can use magic but can’t make it work for alchemy.”

“You’re thinking that if this is true, and if you can get up there, you can do some damage,” Shiro finished for him.

“I am druidically trained,” Lotor admitted. “Besides the caregivers selected by my father, Macidus also attempted to hone my abilities in my youth. I simply refused to continue once I was an adult.”

“This is a very big “if,” Shiro warned. “I have no reason to believe Ryou is lying, that whole thing was disturbingly sincere, but if he is some kind of creature from the other side then it sounds as if he was an adult before Honerva’s experiments landed him here. And it sounds as if you weren’t. Him being able to do…God only knows what doesn’t translate to you being able to.”

“I know,” Lotor admitted. “Which is why I’m sending you the self-destruct codes for the cruiser.”

Shiro was brought up short at the sudden reminder of his swiftly dwindling options. Lotor didn’t wait for an answer.

“If there’s nothing I can do, destroy both ships,” Lotor said solemnly. “Make sure there’s nobody left alive for them to take. Send a message out to the Lorelia warning them not to return.”

This was it, then. Even the best plans they had were one that would draw out the fight slightly but ultimately help very little, and one that was untested and might have no effect at all. The chances of getting out of this one were almost nonexistent.

It was a hard pill to swallow, accepting that he and his crew probably were not going home. That the people of Altea, after running for their lives for ten thousand years, would have the planet that never had a chance to become their new world instead become their final resting place.

The worst part of it was that he knew Adam would understand, but at the same time would be devastated to be left behind again. Keith at least had a family now, and if Allura could get back to Earth at least she could tell everyone what happened and give them closure. But Adam…

The door to the bridge opened, startling him slightly, and he turned to find Sam and Colleen carefully making their way across the slanted floor. The older man flopped down in Mitch’s empty chair as Shiro closed the link with Lotor and instead switched the screen to the outer cameras. Colleen came to sit on the edge of the console.

“You should get back down to Engineering,” Shiro advised, hating how easy it was to sound normal even under the circumstances. “The Lorelia will be back with the balmera crystals any time now.”

“You don’t have to lie,” Sam said tiredly, stretching in a way that made his back pop. “I saw the ship’s internal charges come online. Since that takes three different codes to do, we already know it wasn’t an accident.”

“Is it that bad?” Colleen asked, looking up at the screens, probably truly seeing the extent of what they were facing for the first time.

“It’s that bad,” Shiro confirmed. “If there was any other way…”

“If my son and daughter can go up against Galra armadas and self-destructing enemy mechs believing they’re not going to make it out alive, I can accept that sometimes battles are lost,” Colleen cut him off, looking back down at him. “I know, Shiro. This ship can’t fall into their hands, and neither can these people. I get it. We knew the protocols when we signed on.”

“I don’t want to get your hopes up, but there are some other things in motion,” Shiro sighed and sat back in his chair, giving up on the pretense. “James Griffin is up on one of the cruisers. They’re loading our strikers with pilots and Altean soldiers to bring them up during Lotor’s surrender. Lotor also thinks he has something up his sleeve.”

“Does any of that have a chance of changing what’s going to happen?” Sam asked pragmatically.

“No,” Shiro admitted, the word sounding hollow even to his own ears. “No, I don’t think it does.”

“_Hailing the druid ship_,” Lotor’s voice came over the open channel. “_I will be leaving the cruiser and advancing to the indicated pick up point, but only once you recall your strikers_. _You promised to let everyone else go, so give me this act of good faith.”_

For a moment there was no answer, but then the raspy voice of the druid on Honerva’s ship responded.

“_All Galra ships, recall your strikers to the atmosphere immediately_.”

The sounds of laserfire battering the shields had become so ingrained on his ears that as it began to die off Shiro felt like the withdrawal was met with deafening silence. He took a deep breath simply to make some noise and assure himself that he hadn’t suddenly lost his hearing completely.

His eyes went over to his pilot monitor, which up until now had been dark. Striker numbers began blinking to life as they were silently launched out into the mix, until it got to the point where there was no more space for readouts.

Acxa had done the wise thing and loaded up every striker they could with healthy people, and although the Alteans would technically be considered civilians they were historically a warrior race. Many might die here today, but perhaps there was hope that enough would survive to escape on that orbiting cruiser that they wouldn’t truly be wiped out.

As one, all of the pilot readings abruptly went dark. It was startling, but he knew that meant James had taken over. The strikers would now be flying under a faction banner, indistinguishable from their attackers. From here on out Shiro had to trust Griffin’s skill and experience, and believe he could lead any survivors away from the planet.

“They’ll be okay,” Sam said gently, as if reading his mind. “The MFE pilots had a great teacher.”

He was right, of course. James, Nadia, Ina and Ryan had trained under Adam. If anyone could instill the skills to survive in a younger generation, it was definitely him.

“I hope you’re not taking his behavior personally,” Shiro murmured. “He doesn’t always place blame well, and Kerberos…”

“Kerberos was your decision in the end,” Sam nodded. “But I don’t think he’s going to forgive me any time soon for the part I played in you leaving. It’s a shame. Adam was always one of my best students, I would have liked to work with him again.”

“I can at least tell you with complete certainty that he’ll look after Katie and Matt,” Shiro replied.

“Matt and Katie will be all right too,” Colleen said, looking back up at the viewscreen. “They grew up so fast, all of them. It’s not fair that they had to, but they’ll all carry on.”

Shiro sighed and sat forward, punching in his access codes to take complete control of the Atlas bridge. He searched for, and found, the open line Lotor had left for him and accessed the cruiser’s mainframe, entering Lotor’s codes. A stream of text ran across his screen and then stopped at a simple prompt, waiting for the self-destruct command. He half wished Sam or Colleen would stop him, offer some words of optimism, but both had far too much experience with Galra cruelty in the past.

Lotor moved away from the ships, clear onscreen as he walked to the agreed-upon point at a steady pace. For now the attacking factions upheld the pretense of living up to Honerva’s part of the deal, but their ships remained in attack formation. He reached the meeting point and stopped, holding up his hands to prove he had no weapons.

The question of who would come collect him was answered a moment later, when Honerva herself appeared in a flash of dark purple light.

“Oh, what the hell?” Shiro whispered, his eyes flicking to all the other monitors. “Why is she there?”

“Maybe she doesn’t trust anyone else to take him in?” Colleen asked.

“No,” Shiro disagreed, feeling sick to his stomach. “The only reason she would expose herself like this is if she wants to personally make sure nobody brings him in at all.”

A warning flashed red across the top of the viewscreen, the black markers indicating the locations of the faction ships beginning to move. Like back on Earth they shifted to the side, automatically, following programming that identified an incoming ally ship.

But the cruiser that jumped into the colony atmosphere dwarfed most, if not all, of the faction’s stolen and pirated ships, built for extremely heavy hitting at the sacrifice of speed.

“_Attention all traitor ships_,” a deep male voice that Shiro thought he recognized came over the open lines, calm and authoritative. “_You trespass in airspace that’s been claimed by the Galra Emperor. Surrender or leave the quadrant immediately_.”

“Is that…_Bogh_?” Shiro asked out loud in shock, slowly rising from his seat. There was no way he could forget the gruff commander of the Omega Shield station, completely unimpressed with the Paladins but willing to put aside his personal tastes for his duty to the empire.

“_Nice ship, Bogh_,” a woman’s voice sneered over the open line. “_Finally weaseled your way off that crappy space station, I see_.”

“_One nice ship_,” another male voice taunted. “_It won’t stay nice for long against the rest of us. But the Shadow Claw has a spot for a nice ship like that if you’re looking for a better gig than being a halfbreed’s lapdog.”_

“_The Sorrekar serves the rightfully and traditionally chosen holder of the Imperial throne_,” Bogh drawled, as unimpressed with his former colleagues as he had been with the Paladins. “_Surrender or leave the quadrant immediately_.”

“_Hmm_,” a deeper woman’s voice patronized. “_I think not_.”

The scanners picked up one of the cruisers in orbit shifting its position to fire on the Sorrekar. But given its great size and clear status as an Imperial war machine, Shiro didn’t need to have a visual on it to know its shields had no issue deflecting the attack.

“_Very well_,” Bogh said gruffly. “_Vrepit sa_.”

The flash high in the east was bright enough to see from the ground as the sensors picked up a massive wormhole opening about three hundred thousand miles above the planet. Sensors spiked with the surprise arrival of more warships, led by a small blip that broadcasted under a familiar signal.

“Sorry to take so long!”

Coran’s face appeared onscreen as he hailed through the open channels. Behind him, Camille and two other young Alteans clasped hands, visibly struggling to hold open a portal big enough to deliver the entirety of the Galra Imperial armada.

“We didn’t manage to find a balmera, but we did come across some familiar faces wandering in your direction and thought we’d give them a lift!”

“Coran, you’re a life saver!” Shiro exclaimed, well aware that Coran had no idea just how literal that title currently was.

“_By law of the Galra Empire, all faction ships present are actively involved in terrorism and treason_,” Bogh announced to the arriving ships. “_They have declined our merciful offer of surrender or retreat and have sealed their own fates._ _Destroy with extreme prejudice_.”

The sky lit up with laserfire then, but it didn’t come from the Imperial ships. To the west, a faction cruiser suddenly turned on the ships surrounding it, the shared shield system allowing it to disarm their defenses. It set two other cruisers alight, sending them careening down into the atmosphere toward the ground and putting at least a third of the strikers still in the sky into disarray.

On the monitor screen, the broadcasted ID from the cruiser switched to a Coalition call sign, a glaring flag identifying who was currently in control. The firefight began in earnest then, the commandeered cruiser from one end and the Imperial ships on the other, sandwiching the faction attackers in between.

The lightning storm of lasers drew the attention of everyone, and Shiro almost forgot about Lotor and Honerva. He quickly searched his view for the two Alteans and found them still out on the field, looking upward at the outbreak of battle that had caught them just as much by surprise as anyone.

The view was briefly eclipsed by Jade zooming by, followed closely by one of Honerva’s mechs. The fight was on for everybody now, it seemed.

Then Honerva looked toward the mech following Romelle, and Lotor looked down at Honerva.

“Don’t,” Shiro whispered, already knowing what he was going to do. He had seen Lotor’s stance stiffen that way before. “She’s not Zarkon, don’t do it!”

It was too late. He charged her, producing a weapon seemingly out of thin air. The blade was similar to those Lotor usually used but was constructed purely of quintessence, as if he had summoned his own bayard into being by sheer willpower alone.

It made contact with a flash of purple light that Honerva threw up in front of her easily, a surge of feedback sending him rolling across the frozen ground away from her.

Never one to be down long, Lotor was back on his feet and back on the attack in an instant. He was fast and he was agile, and if he had been up against anyone else he would have won easily. But this wasn’t just anyone, and Honerva blocked every blow and swing as if she could read his mind and already knew what was coming.

He took a hit that knocked the wind out of him. He was still moving quickly but now he was just a little bit slower, just slow enough to be put at a disadvantage. He came in again and this time Honerva caught the blade between her hands, gripping it tightly and sending another power feedback through it.

Lotor was forced to let go to avoid taking the brunt of the shock, only to end up in an even worse position. Honerva flipped the blade around and closed the distance between them.

Shiro’s head snapped to the side, his eyes squeezing closed automatically, unable to unsee what was playing out on the screen. Lotor was facing away from him, but the three-quarters of the blade’s length that now protruded from the sliced hole in the back of his helmet and the way his body went completely limp was enough detail to tell him the fight was over.

The ground exploded in laserfire as Opal sped toward the remaining combatant, but Honerva didn’t even twitch.

“Allura, no!” Shiro slammed the console to open up the communication line, but he already knew his words would fall on deaf ears. “Pull back! _Pull back!_ You can’t help him, you’re putting yourself in the line of—“

Honerva’s cruiser, mostly forgotten, fired on Opal. The shot landed true and the ship’s power sputtered, sending it crashing into the ground. Allura ejected as Honerva turned on it, a flash of purple light enveloping the ship and encircling it in a sphere that contracted quickly. The tiny, crushed scrap of metal it turned Opal into left Shiro almost breathless.

Above, the cruiser was turning its cannon on the Imperial ships. It was the weapon Honerva had used on Blue after they had rescued Adam, leaving her floating lifeless from a drained power grid. Shiro had little doubt this was based on the same technology as the mechs, sucking the power out of targets as their newly arrived rescuers began to crash to the planet’s surface in raging balls of fire.

“Handle the bridge,” Shiro called breathlessly to Colleen and Sam as he scrambled across the tilted floor.

He closed the door behind him, locking it with his personal code so that no enemies who might get on the ship could get in, and took off down the corridor. The lift that always seemed to move so quickly felt as if it were moving at a snail’s pace, everything and everyone in the docking bay he flew across seemingly specifically positioned to slow him down. He yelled through his comm line for Sam to open a point in the shields as he threw on his helmet, taking the disembarking stairs in a leap and hitting the ground running.

He knew it was a pointless goal to chase, but he had to try to get to Allura before she got to Honerva. She was a warrior, a fighter to the end, but he couldn’t let her fight like this. He couldn’t let her go up against Honerva with Lotor’s body laying at their feet, Shiro knew all too well what kind of distraction that could be from facing off with her back on the plateau.

Everything was in slow motion as he ran, closing the distance to the shield in a way that felt like a muted dream. A small spot in the barrier flickered to let him pass, the true noise of the deafening battle above vibrating him down to his bones as he left the protection of its sphere. Allura was ahead of him, he could see her charging toward Honerva, her white breastplate spotted with red from an injury she’d taken in her escape from Opal just before it had been destroyed.

Shiro screamed for her to stop but she didn’t hear. A high-pitched shriek made him skid to a stop, a literal miracle as Carnelian hit the ground and slid past him so close he would have been crushed if he hadn’t stopped. No, not Carnelian, a _piece_ of Carnelian, one of several that littered the ground below the Komar mech that was tearing the rest of it apart. Shiro looked across the desolate field to the chunk of cockpit as it skidded to a stop, its pilot visible, strapped in her seat and unmoving.

The sky was a storm of fire as Imperial ships fell down around them like rain, the last remaining breezes from the false atmosphere kicking up a fluttering dance of ash. The two Komari turned on Jade, catching up to it and grabbing it out of the air. An explosion sounded painfully close by, the heat of it enough to reach him where he stood and forcing him to spin around and stare in horror at the falling, burning remains of the Lorelia. A handful of strikers went by, firing onto it, causing another chain of explosions as its power core ruptured.

For a second, Shiro went numb. He hadn’t had much hope to begin with, but the battle had turned in barely the span of a breath and it left him dizzy and in partial shock. Lotor was gone, Veronica was gone, Coran and Hira were gone, Bogh, by now, was gone. Was the cruiser that carried their hidden soldiers even still in the sky? He didn’t know. The world was fire and brimstone, and this time there was no escape.

The clang of weapons meeting gave him something to focus his senses on, forcing himself to turn back to where Honerva and Allura now sparred. Allura had her staff, lashing out at Honerva in fury, but the older woman had drawn one of her own and was keeping her at bay.

The earth around their feet exploded with the unbridled force of magic being freely thrown back and forth, light and dark equally destructive as they were honed into weapons with lethal force. There was nothing subtle about the two warriors’ intent as they came to blows again and again, each wanted the other dead and they would stop at nothing to reach that goal.

But Allura, deep down, wasn’t a killer. Her emotions overwhelmed everything else, making her tailor her attacks and defense to protecting Lotor’s body from further desecration. It was a weakness Honerva identified quickly, and immediately turned against her.

Shiro saw it about a second before it happened. He saw Allura, pant for breath, plant her feet for leverage. She gripped her staff and prepared to issue another attack, but then made the mistake of letting her eyes flick down and back to where Lotor lay.

That one instant, that tiny moment of distraction, Honerva saw it right away.

Shiro forced is shaking legs to move. He pushed everything else out of his mind, ignored the screams and the blood and the fire, poured everything into launching himself forward into the fray. He acted purely on instinct, his senses barely communicating with his brain enough to let him understand what he was even doing.

Honerva’s staff came down and met his raised prosthetic instead of the back of Allura’s shoulders as he barely managed to insert himself between the two women. He felt the dark energy shoot through him, painfully familiar from his days in captivity as it vibrated clear through to his skeleton before running out to all of his nerves with a burst of fiery pain. His vision briefly went black, his senses overloaded, and he only vaguely felt his knees hit the ground as he fell.

As the pain began to ebb and the stars cleared from his line of view something else hit him, hard, sending him skidding across the ground. Shiro only barely shook sense back into his head in time to see the two robed druids approaching him, rolling out of the way as one zapped the ground where he lay.

He counted four more as he got to his feet, looking around wildly. He and Allura were surrounded, completely outnumbered with Honerva in the fight, and they immediately took advantage of the fact.

Shiro fought as hard as he could but quickly found himself overwhelmed even with Allura at his back. On a better day she would have been able to take Honerva just like she had back on Colony One. But her scars from Altea were fresh and she was reliving her nightmares in real time, something Shiro understood painfully well as he tried desperately to suppress his own bad memories.

Pain from taking direct hits drowned out everything else as he went down, and before he knew it there were hands on him as Galra soldiers who had landed their strikers came to Honerva’s aid and held them down. He fought, but she had created this cloned body and knew its strengths, and Shiro’s struggles were useless.

Nearby the Komar mechs landed, slamming the shields on the cruiser and Atlas with their weapons, sucking the power from the ships’ defenses and making the barriers flicker out of existence. More Galra strikers landed and the soldiers were unstoppable as the Komari tore off the airlock doors to grant them access.

Shiro struggled wildly, lost in desperation. He could hear Allura screaming nearby, practically out of her mind with anger, unable to understand her Altean words or see her let alone help her.

“Take these two to the lab,” Honerva stood nearby, ordering the druids who looked down at the two of them. She looked toward the ships as Altean civilians were dragged screaming out of the hold, unprotected against the airless atmosphere and freezing temperatures. He could see soldiers from the Atlas fighting, but against the huge numbers of arriving Galra they were being slaughtered. “Keep any children alive, take them to the lab as well. Save some of the fighters, I can trade them for parts to finish the new war mechs.”

It was everything he had feared when the ships had begun to arrive, the same savage massacre that followed the bloodthirsty Galra through the universe. But as Shiro craned his head up to look toward the Atlas, where a small box just inside the hold flashed its light from green to red, he felt a flood of panic mixed with relief.

Sam and Colleen had activated the self-destruct. Nobody here was going to go to a lab, or suffer being murdered here in the fields. And they would take a huge chunk of faction soldiers, and Honerva and her druids, down with them.

The sound of the initial explosions was deafening. Shiro only heard two before he was simply no longer able to hear anything, and was quickly blinded by the huge flashes of light. He had the span of a heartbeat to be afraid, and then the intense wave of heat burned away all sensation and dropped him into the peace of complete blackness.

* * *

The world stayed silent.

It was difficult to vouch for the other senses, though, and Shiro was afraid to try. The very fact that he could think about it was frightening, he’d never given much thought to the afterlife but the continued functioning of his mind was a solid enough proof that there was one to an extent.

Very slowly, he moved his body. It moved freely for the most part, but there were points where it was restricted. His wrists, his legs, his right shoulder.

Abruptly, his lungs reminded him to take a breath and he did so, the discomfort in his chest forcing him to a confusing deduction. He wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be dead. Dead people didn’t need to breathe.

Gingerly, he opened his eyes. It didn’t provide him immediately with any answers.

The world was blazing bright from one angle, black from another, flickering from another. The more he moved his head, carefully turning it back and forth, the more fractured and distorted everything became. He managed to get the sense that he was on the ground outside the Atlas, out in the field where he’d been fighting alongside Allura, still pinned down by the Galra soldiers who had been holding him.

That part, at least, he could remedy. He couldn’t see them clearly but he could feel them, still and silent as statues. Shiro thrashed and wriggled to get himself free, managing to escape their hold as they remained unmoving and didn’t react to keep him held down.

His view of the world was disorienting, it gave him difficulty finding his footing. He squeezed his eyes closed against the nausea that washed over him, and as the disorientation passed he noticed a faint sound.

Breathing, strained and filled with effort, coming from somewhere close.

Gingerly he rose, keeping his eyes closed and carefully following the sound. If he didn’t look around the world felt almost normal, solid ground beneath his feet. When he felt the presence was much closer Shiro braved opening his eyes, and found himself once again able to see with some semblance of normalcy.

The world here was very bright. Shiro looked around slowly, taking it all in, trying to process. Where the Atlas should be there was a glaring light, fading to his other side in a darker view littered with pieces of steel floating in thin air. In the few places he could see through the light he saw people, Galra and druids, either staring in shock or lifting their arms to shield their faces.

Like a snapshot. A still moment in time. As if everything had been frozen at the point just after the Atlas had exploded.

In the center of it all was a bright glow, about a foot in diameter, from which everything almost seemed to emanate. It was cupped in the hands of a tall man, taller even than Curtis, with golden brown skin and short white hair streaked through with thin threads of red. Shiro had the nagging feeling he had seen him before, but not in the soft leather clothes he currently wore. Armor, Shiro thought he remembered armor.

The man was struggling to keep his hold. He finally seemed to notice Shiro was there, looking up at him with an almost wild desperation.

“You have to go,” he ground out. “Get out of the blast range, fast. I can’t hold this for very long…Honerva’s gone, she took off when the explosions started, you still have a chance to find an intact striker and make it back to Earth.”

“I…what about everybody else?” Shiro asked, looking past him dumbly at the fiery inferno that had once been the Atlas. “Allura? Coran? Veronica?”

“I’m sorry, nobody else is going to make it,” the man said tersely. “And you won’t either if you don’t go _now_.”

Shiro’s feet were rooted to the ground. Everything about this was insane, impossible to process, but beyond that he simply could not accept that he would walk away from this alone.

Reality seemed to agree with him. The man’s estimation of how much time he had proved to be inaccurate as his strength gave out, and whatever hold he had on the steady march of time released. Around them things began to move again, slowly at first but gradually picking up speed. Shiro felt the heat rise quickly and winced, throwing up an arm to protect his face.

But the hiccup was brief. After a few seconds the heat subsided again, and everything once again ceased to move. The ball of light the man had been controlling flickered, turning from white to a deep purple that made it look almost like some kind of floating black hole.

Shiro peeked at it over his arm, then looked to the man across from him. He had fallen to sit on the ground, and was looking up at the ball with astonishment.

“What is it?” Shiro asked, growing more confused by the second. “What’s happening?”

“Somebody else is here,” the man answered, warily getting to his feet. “Somebody stronger than I am is keeping time stopped.”

“Who?”

“Wh…I don’t know who!” The man said irritably. “I saw as much as you did!”

He backed away from the ball and slowly walked around it in a circle, looking outward as if searching for this other presence. He gave up rather quickly, returning his attention to Shiro.

“It doesn’t matter. There are all kinds of extra-dimensional beings living in the realities, if one wants to anonymously help us right now I’ll take it. Whoever they are, they can stop the time fabric from weaving better than I can and that’s all I need.”

“So this…spot,” Shiro said carefully. “Time is frozen?”

“Yes, time is stopped here,” the other man said, looking around as well. “Just on this planet and its atmosphere, it’s still going outside of that. There’s a bubble here where things are somewhat normal, but it loses its effect the farther you go. You can remove your helmet here.”

Shiro carefully did so and found he could breathe. Curiously, he took three steps back in the direction he’d come. As he’d been told, his view began to distort again.

“The photons aren’t moving,” he realized. Now that wasn’t a problem that science fiction movies and books tended to visit.

“No, and your eyes need them to see,” the other man confirmed. “If you walk you’ll run into them and be able to see for a short time, but your movement will disturb them and you’ll never see the same view from the same place twice.”

Shiro backed toward his voice, marveling as his vision returned to normal again.

“To your left,” the man called suddenly, startling Shiro and looking in the other direction. “Just keep walking.”

Shiro looked in the direction he had glanced as Lotor stumbled into the small circle of normal time. He struggled and pulled his helmet off as well, sucking in a deep breath of air and trying to wipe away some of the hair that was plastered to his forehead with a disturbingly thick smear of blood.

“WHAT,” Lotor sputtered, then immediately ran out of steam as his brain fell behind on figuring out what he wanted to say. He looked down at his helmet, made the most comical face Shiro had ever seen him make, then flipped the helmet around to show the gaping hole in the back of it. “_What_.”

“How is he alive?” Shiro asked in disbelief.

“He’s not,” the tall man answered. “But he’s more than mortal. His core will retain his identity in full until he’s born again, he won’t fade or distort.”

“…what,” Lotor repeated dumbly.

“I said you’re dead,” the other man said loudly, in case the problem was that Lotor couldn’t hear. “When I stopped time, I created this small sphere of astral plane so I could warn Shiro face to face. Your core is no longer in your body, but it’s visible here.”

Shiro took a deep breath. His brain was all over the place, he had to focus. There was no way to figure out what his next steps were if he didn’t even know what was actually going on now.

“Okay,” Shiro said carefully, looking at his benefactor. “First things first. I know you. How do I know you?”

“I think if you think about it for half a second you’ll answer your own question.”

The attitude was not necessary, but Shiro overlooked it for the moment. Under the circumstances, anybody would be testy.

“You’re the White Lion,” he said out loud what he’d been thinking, and in return received a slight nod. Shiro gestured to Lotor. “Okay, he’s dead. I saw him die. But you wanted me to get out of here, so I must not be dead.”

“One dead, one not,” White agreed.

“What,” Lotor whispered, looking down at his broken helmet as he tried to work through the shock.

“So you stopped time here, on this planet, right before I would be killed,” Shiro deduced.

“I couldn’t do it any sooner,” White replied, absently crossing his arms and looking around. “It’s very difficult to do anything without a physical avatar in this reality. I can’t just take over your body on a whim, I need permission or you can easily take back control. But you were a bit too occupied for me to get through to during the fight. I think I only managed what I did out of sheer desperation, and even then I couldn’t do it until Honerva was gone. The thing that controls her…it’s very powerful. It would have simply reversed anything I did.”

“With whatever is keeping time stable right now, are we able to do anything?” Shiro asked dully. “Can we save anyone else? Start getting anyone alive out of range before time reverts back?”

White sighed heavily, shaking his head.

“Everyone is dead, Shiro,” he said gently. “Allura was closer to the blast. The Lorelia went down, the Atlas and Cruiser were engulfed. Anyone you save will only die slightly slower from their injuries.”

He uncrossed his arms and approached the shimmering ball of black energy, lightly reaching out to rest his hand on it.

“Whoever is doing this is a friend, or at least an ally,” he said after a moment. “And a powerful one. Stopping time is a very difficult thing to do, only Ascended can do it…Whites, Golds, Onyxes. But being powerful doesn’t mean it’s always useful, there are limits this reality places on us. If whoever is doing this was capable of unwinding the time fabric instead of just freezing it, they would have.”

“What do you mean by unwind?” Shiro asked, moving to stand beside him. He didn’t touch the sphere, there was something about it that made him uncomfortable. He wouldn’t call it evil, but it gave off much darker vibes than he liked. “You mean reversing it?”

“Time is a fabric,” White explained. “Every person, every life, is a thread. They interact and affect the world, and their threads weave the fabric into a solid history. Sometimes, in small areas, it’s possible to unwind those threads. Once you release it, time will re-weave itself very quickly, but in a different pattern depending on what you changed.

“It’s hard to do though,” White warned. “It goes against the natural order of things.”

“Can you do it?”

Shiro thought he knew the answer to that. White wasn’t volunteering anything, it had to be pulled out of him, and there was undoubtedly a very good reason for that. Playing with time was going to have a very heavy price tag, Shiro could figure that out without being told, and it was a price the White Lion was reluctant to pay.

For a long moment, White didn’t say anything. Lotor had been listening and seemed to have come to his senses somewhat, coming to stand beside them. Shiro wondered if he’d ever had a day as weird as this, or if Lotor was also so numb he was beyond the point of being shocked anymore.

“I can do it,” White finally confirmed Shiro’s suspicions. “But not like this. I’m not anchored to this universe, what I can do here is very limited. With something to tie me to the physical planes, I have far more usable power at my disposal.”

“Can you use me?” Shiro asked. “The way you did out at the power station, when you helped Allura?”

“That was child’s play,” White replied. “I would need something much more permanent for this.”

_Permanent._

“Like Honerva?” Shiro asked reluctantly. “Like that entity that uses her body?”

“I am nothing like that thing,” White said disdainfully. “It controls her like a puppet, taking all and giving nothing in return. To you it may seem powerful, but its strength is limited here the same as mine is…it has power you couldn’t even dream of, it simply cannot use more than a fraction of it on a plane it’s not permanently connected to. And it will never sacrifice that greater power just to take over a single universe.”

“So if you do what you need to do to rewind time, you’d be giving up your power?” Shiro frowned.

“I would be giving up everything,” White answered tiredly. “Right now, I can use a few tricks here. Cast a few spells, do a bit of magic. That’s why I began teaching Alteans, the power they were able to wield here was far greater than what I could, I had hoped they would find the source of the darkness I was tracking and be able to extinguish it. But that darkness simply took over an Empress and nearly exterminated the race that might have been able to defeat it.”

“The darkness you were tracking,” Lotor finally spoke, looking startled. “This isn’t the first universe this…Formless has taken?’

“No,” White admitted. “There were three before this one, but I was always able to find a race I could introduce alchemy to. I was able to instill good judgement and guide them toward defending their universe and ridding it of the thing that sought to take over. But in this universe, I failed. This thing stopped sending minions and finally came itself. It wiped out the Altean people, knowing that if I had no visitors to Oriande I would be trapped there with nobody to teach and nobody physical to hitch a ride on and escape.

“It’s had ten thousand years unchecked. It may not be able to use all of its power, but what it does have it’s used to form an empire. It’s been creating physical soldiers here that can house its mindless followers, so that once it’s done sucking this universe dry it can go into the next one with an army instead of alone. All universes will fall, and eventually so will the quintessence field.”

White let go of the sphere and turned to face them both, and for the first time Shiro took a very good look at him. He didn’t seem old and wise, or like a grizzled, war-taught soldier. He looked uncertain, sad, at the end of his rope. It echoed so many of the things Shiro felt inside, like someone who had been thrust into this position unwillingly and some days was barely treading water.

“Right now, I can do very little here,” White reiterated. “If I anchor myself to the physical planes, I sacrifice about two thirds of my power to be able to use about a third of it here. But that third is still at least enough to challenge this entity and its Formless. If I can stop its armies here, strip it of its advantage, I can ultimately protect my family and my home. But I would be tied to the physical universes, and I would never be able to go back there.”

So that was the price that White would have to pay to help. An immortal being would have to give up whatever eternal life existed in the quintessence field it came from. He would be stripped of most of his power, trapped here in this universe.

“So if you did that,” Shiro said carefully, “and if you used my body…what would happen to me?”

“You personally?” White asked. “Nothing. As far as I can tell, two simply become one. Neither overpowers the other, but we won’t coexist either. One person, with a mixed memory. Like Lotor. Like Kuro.”

Shiro felt the cool sliver of discomfort in his chest as the other man was mentioned. Over the last few months he had grown very fond of Ryou, their shared origin taking the place of a shared childhood in making him feel like a real, biological brother. This revelation that he was something very different than Shiro had believed felt almost like a personal attack, like the universe was trying to take back a gift that had been given.

He didn’t know if his expression was readable or if White had simply been dwelling in his head long enough to know what he was thinking. The Lion waved his own statement off, as if it was inconsequential.

“It’s not a bad thing to be what he is. It’s strange to some, but it’s not unnatural. There are millions of us who have come across the border into the realities, living throughout the many universes. Lotor and Kuro aren’t abominations or blips on the radar, and what makes up their cores doesn’t make the mortal lives they lead false. Kuro is still a man who has escaped from captivity, trained himself in medicine, and found a home on Earth. Lotor is still the self-appointed champion of an entire race of people who have been relying on him for ten thousand years. You’ll still be the idiot who went to Kerberos and doesn’t know the sound a laser makes.”

“Then what do I give up?” Shiro pressed. There was no way the full cost of such an exchange would be borne by only one party and he knew it. “What do I lose in this?”

“Your mortality,” White answered simply. “In the short term that can seem trivial, but as time wears on it can prove to be an agonizing loss. Your body is still physical, it can still be killed, but if you avoid that your natural lifespan can extend to the end of this universe’s life and beyond. You would watch everyone you love die, watch your sun eventually explode and your planet be destroyed, watch your species eventually either go extinct or evolve so extensively you’re no longer part of it. At the end of it all you’ll watch as the stars go out, and be one of the last things alive to witness the universe’s death and destruction.

“If you survive it and cross the border into the next universe, you’ll spend countless billions of years alone, waiting for an intelligent species to evolve. Every civilization you come into contact with, you’ll watch it rise and fall and witness the end of those you grow to call friends. If your body does get killed or destroyed, you’ll still eventually be reborn…but it may take millions or even billions of years to happen. When it does you’ll go through yet another childhood, fully aware of what you are and what’s going to happen to everything around you. You don’t give up anything, so much as condemn yourself to what could be equated to an eternal hell.”

“…oh,” Shiro said weakly. “So, no pressure.”

White shrugged.

“I have to make sure you understand how it can be at its worst. I won’t paint you a rosy picture of something that might cause you endless suffering. But I can point out that you would still be ahead of the curve compared to many others in your position…this is a future Lotor and Kuro already face. If you stick together, none of you has to face it alone.”

It was a very heavy choice, but White’s reminder did put something into perspective. Lotor and Kuro were beings that were going to live through the horror he’d just painted anyway, without getting anything in return. Shiro, at least, had a chance to get something out of it.

“Basically, it’s my soul in exchange for the thousands of lives on these ships,” Shiro surmised. “For the billions of lives Honerva will destroy if she isn’t stopped. So if you’re willing…do it.”

Maybe it was too many movies, but Shiro expected more of a reaction. Perhaps some kind of ominous blood pact, or for White to conjure up some obviously cursed contract he needed to sign. The reality was far more benign and almost boring, which really made it hit home how absolutely batshit insane this entire day had been so far. White shrugged and gave a “guess this is what we’re doing, then” sigh and looked over at Lotor.

“You’re going to not be dead in a minute,” he warned.

“If you think that’s going to improve my day after I had to stand here and listen to you say the rest of my existence is going to be wretched, I advise you to think again,” Lotor replied.

“Oh, your day is going to improve,” White assured him. “Honerva left as soon as everything started exploding. I can’t affect anyone who’s not in my sphere of influence with this, she’s not going to be there after this rewind.”

“Not even up on her ship in orbit?” Shiro frowned.

White didn’t answer. Instead he looked over at Lotor, who let out a breath.

“The ships aren’t the only things exploding,” Lotor said. “The whole planet is beginning to fracture.”

“_What_?”

“I couldn’t let Honerva or the Galra get their hands on the planet’s psyferite if we lost,” Lotor answered. “When I set up the cruiser’s self-destruct, I launched three of the ship’s long-range missiles down into the lava tubes. They were set to go off with the self-destruct command.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Shiro murmured, letting that sink in. They weren’t just taking the Galra foot soldiers here down with them, they were taking any ship that wasn’t prepared for the explosion of the planet itself down.

No wonder Honerva had ditched, and fast.

“She didn’t take her ship,” White commented, looking up past the light of the frozen explosions. “She doesn’t actually need it, her teleportation power is immense. By now she’s on a summoned Galra cruiser, probably on her way to launch her next round of attack now that she believes some of her biggest threats are neutralized. But that means we still have to deal with that ship, and the Komar cannon it has. It will need to be taken out immediately, before it can start bringing down Imperial ships. And we still have to deal with her druids.”

“Honerva herself is out of the way at least, that’s one big hurdle down,” Shiro supposed. “Lotor…you said you were druidically trained. I know she was too much, but what about her druids that are left behind?”

“They won’t be down on the ground if everything is being reset,” Lotor replied. “Can you get me up on her cruiser? I think I can take out that weapon and them before they realize what’s happening.”

Shiro looked at White, who nodded.

“Yes. I won’t bother explaining, you’ll know everything I know in a minute. Just remember, besides you, Lotor will be the only one here who will realize time has been stopped and unwound. Nobody else here will remember, or know what’s going on when Honerva suddenly disappears. There will be some confusion, be prepared for it. Lotor, you need to move away.”

Shiro and Lotor both nodded. Lotor backed away, and Shiro watched him go until he disappeared past the point where light continued to move, effectively leaving him alone with the White Lion. White looked no more certain than Shiro felt, but Shiro could tell that his wish to stop Honerva was genuine.

This was for both of their worlds, Shiro told himself. Maybe for all worlds.

White came to stand in front of him and held out a hand. Carefully, Shiro took it, waiting for something dramatic to happen.

If it did, he missed it. He felt immediately sleepy, like all of his strength had abruptly been sapped from his body. It was a battle to remain standing, one he quickly lost, and his impossibly heavy eyelids were closed before he hit the ground.

Shiro dreamed, but he couldn’t really hold onto any of it. Things flitted through his head noncommittally, thoughts and memories and random scenarios created by an overstimulated brain. None of it was solid enough to full process, everything passed so quickly it left only vague impressions and sensations.

When he woke up, his first thought was that the grass under him was very hard and very sharp. It poked into his face and stabbed him in his side where his armor didn’t cover his undersuit. Groaning, Shiro pushed himself up and cracked his sore back, taking a look around.

The grass was crystalized, which explained why it felt so sharp. It didn’t look real, more like it had been sculpted out of faceted glass, and a faint smoke was rising from it all around where Shiro sat.

_Quintessence overexposure_, he thought. _Compression of interdimensional mass at an accelerated rate with no path of release for the overflow…a whole patch of Infinite Zero crystals. Which I guess makes sense, the compression of interdimensional mass is almost equal to the flash of infinite intradimensional mass created by a teludav, give or take a margin of error of .0000753 percent._

Shiro broke off part of a blade and held it up, where it reflected the light of frozen explosions and glittered like a prism. He could feel the energy radiating from it, and did a quick calculation.

_A fleet and a half. There are enough crystals here to power a fleet and a half, then power eighty percent of Coalition planets after Honerva’s defeated and the warships can be decommissioned. How do I know any that?_

Then again, why wouldn’t he know that? It was the simplest of sciences and mathematics, a cub could calculate that on one paw. Except that human beings didn’t have cubs, they had children, and children didn’t have paws, they had hands. And they certainly didn’t think cross-dimensional math and physics were simple.

Shiro got carefully to his feet, feeling like his center of balance was all wrong. He felt like he should be taller and bigger, but at the same time like he was strangely limited. His brain felt like it could easily do calculations beyond the abilities of most computers, yet simultaneously felt too small to hold everything he knew he should know.

And that was just his internal senses, his balance and thoughts and sense of self. When he moved onto his outer senses things got even weirder.

He knew what this frozen bubble of spacetime looked like, he’d been standing in it since it had been stilled. But now it looked different, filled with details that were so obvious to him now that he couldn’t fathom why he hadn’t seen them before. The flow of movement, the complex patterns that formed predictable motions that before he had thought would be random, these things stood out to him clear as day.

He could tell exactly where the flames were going to go next, where the patches of ground were going to burst under the force of Lotor’s secret missiles, exactly how the planet was going to crack and where every part of it would go. And, Shiro could even more easily trace the path along which everything had already followed.

_Because those are the threads I told him about, _he thought._ No, that he told me about. That I told me about?_

He distinctly remembered being Takashi Shirogane, standing back while the White Lion told him how time really worked. And he also distinctly remembered being the White One, standing by the curiously dark energy orb and explaining in small words a human would understand how the time fabric functioned.

It was fascinating and disturbing at the same time. He could remember being two different people, and now he was both of them at once. But it was a little harder to remember the many billions of years he’d existed before now, his aforementioned brain only had so much space, which made it a little easier to think of himself more as Shiro in this current incarnation. But his other identity was there, not forgotten in the least and easily accessed if he thought about it.

He knew now how to fix this, and he knew he had the power to do it. It was going to stretch him very thin, this bonding business was stupidly draining and he felt almost dead on his feet, but there would be time to rest when they won.

Shiro regained his balance and knelt down, gathering a number of the newly born Infinite Zero crystals and sliding them into the small pouch in his flight suit. He was going to need them to bolster the strength he’d exhausted during his change, they would magnify the power he did have and turn the tide of this fight very, very quickly. They were a pleasant gift he hadn’t expected, and he was going to make use of them.

When he was ready, he approached the dark sphere and lightly rested his hands on it, gently reaching out to the entity that was still fortifying this suspended moment in time. It felt very different to him now than it had a few minutes ago, unpredictable and chaotic but not at all unfriendly. Shiro could have sworn he’d felt it somewhere before, but he couldn’t remember if it had been during his human lifetime or during White’s extensive Guardian one.

Had it been here, in this universe? Or in another one? In the quintessence field? In this lifetime?

The sphere grew warm, the ball of alchemical energy beginning to unfreeze and move again as whoever held it steady recognized that Shiro could handle it and began to relinquish it back. He got the sense that this entity knew _him_, even if he couldn’t put his finger on it.

The dark purple shine ebbed away, revealing the sphere’s original bright glow, and Shiro had to reach out on several different levels to grab a hold of the fabric around the planet to hold everything steady when it was released. It was back in his hands now, ready to be manipulated as he saw fit.

Shiro gripped the threads around him, able to sense them all perfectly clearly, confident that he knew exactly what he was doing, and pulled.

* * * * * * * * * *

The world began moving in reverse. Sporadic and strange, movements that would have seemed smooth and organic in their natural course of motion now seeming jerky and bizarre. Lotor watched as a jagged cliff that loomed up in front of him shimmied itself downward, lining up even with the rest of the ground around it as the grass Allura had created bounced back down from the sky and resituated itself in a smooth, unbroken layer. Bodies that had flown backward leapt forward again, landing in the spots where they’d been hit by explosions before comically beginning to run backward toward the ships they’d disembarked from.

Black smoke, white light, and red fire licked the air in waves and clouds, compressing themselves back from the grand bloom they’d become, disappearing down into cracks in the Atlas and cruiser hulls that sealed themselves closed. Flames pulled back from across the ground, snaking their way back into a tangled mass that rose up from the ground and reformed into the Lorelia, and a tiny tangle of metal unfolded and returned to the sky in the form of Opal.

All around him, rubble and ruins once again became buildings and ships and living people. He watched it all in awe, which proved to be a terrible mistake when time hit the point where he had been separated from his body and he wasn’t prepared.

Outside of his physical form, he had been untouched by the changes. But once this place reached the point where his participation was included, he found the world flipped upside down and inverted to a point where he had no idea what was going on. He felt searing pain in his head, then a disturbing sensation of an open wound closing up, and then when he was once again aware of his surroundings the world was frozen again.

But this time everything was clear. There was no smoke or fire filling the area, the field once again looked as it had right before Honerva had confronted him. Up above, he could see the burning glow of an open wormhole and the arrival of the Imperial armada.

He started to pull off his helmet to check the status of his injury, but realized at the last second that he was no longer in a tiny bubble of created atmosphere. Instead he looked around, spotting Shiro as the other man came to stand beside him.

He was…different. His mannerisms and way of walking were very similar, but still not entirely the same. He held himself a bit differently, and when he turned his head Lotor could see that his once silvery grey irises were now a pale, pearly white that were only barely dark enough to be differentiated from the rest of his eyes.

Lotor reached out and poked Shiro’s shoulder experimentally. Still solid, still alive. The look he gave still very much that of an exhausted father who hadn’t had a nap in years and wanted nothing more than a quiet vacation on the beach. Lotor poked him again, just to be sure, at which point Shiro finally lost his patience.

“Stop that,” he hissed, smacking Lotor’s hand away. “It’s weird, I know. You’re not helping.”

“I don’t think “weird” is quite the word,” Lotor answered, letting his hand fall back to his side. “It feels more as if I’ve gone so far past shock I don’t know how to react to anything anymore.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’re both going to need therapy after this is over,” Shiro agreed. “I’m not going to be able to put off an appointment for that much longer after all of this. Are you sure you can take out that cruiser if I can get you up there? That thing is the biggest threat here, it took out the Blue Lion with one shot. Everything will play out exactly the same if we don’t take that piece off the board.”

“It’s my cruiser, I know every inch of her,” Lotor answered, looking up toward the sky. “Which is good, because I’ll have to take her down from the inside. Those Komari won’t let anything get close enough to destroy it any other way.”

“I’m going to get you a ride up,” Shiro told him, taking a few steps back. He pulled something out of his pouch, a handful of somethings that glowed softly.

“Is that…?” Lotor asked in surprise.

“Zero crystals,” Shiro confirmed. “I’ll explain when this is over. There’s a patch of them back in the field that can be harvested when the fight is over, we need to keep the Galra from getting close. Get ready, your trip up isn’t going to be smooth.”

Shiro walked back toward the Atlas, past a patch of glittering grass that Lotor assumed must be the crystals he was talking about. He tossed two of the ones he was carrying toward the Atlas, where they bounced lightly off the still-standing particle barrier to land near the loading bay doors.

He looked back at Lotor to see if he was ready, and Lotor nodded. It was now or never.

He felt something within, almost like a ‘click’ of a switch being flipped, and everything around them began to move again. Lotor immediately looked around to try and pick out Opal, making sure Allura wasn’t too close to everything going on.

“Welcome back, Coran,” Shiro’s voice came over the open comm line now. “That ship doesn’t have any weapons, let’s bring you guys in and dock you, quick. Sam, Colleen…there are two power crystals by the port docking bay doors. Grab them and get to the bridge to install them. Stay grounded unless I give the order, shoot as much power as you can through to reinforce the particle barrier.”

“_Where did you get power crystals?_” Sam asked in surprise.

“Not the time for questions, Sam,” Shiro warned. “Move. Now.”

He was more forceful than he would normally be with these crew members who he considered his friends and family, and the urgency hammered home the need for obedience without question. It was barely five ticks later before a soldier was sprinting from the port docking bay doors to the particle barrier to collect the crystals, then rushing them back into the ship.

The firefight was beginning, just like it had the first time around. Time was running short for them to stop Honerva’s cruiser before that cannon started hobbling their newly arrived allies.

Shiro walked back toward Lotor, putting some distance between himself and the Atlas. His eyes were closed, the remaining crystals he’d had cupped in his hands. For a moment it didn’t appear anything was happening, then Lotor could have sworn he felt the very earth move.

Shiro stopped and held up a hand, outstretched. For the most part he appeared to be doing nothing, but Lotor watched with the eye of an alchemy student and trained druid. He could faintly see the glimmer of threads being manipulated, feel the reverberations of the power Shiro was siphoning from the crystals and forcing outward.

Two of the Komar mechs stopped following Opal and Jade, moving instead to hover over where Shiro stood as if they had been called, and Lotor could feel the tug of war happening between the man on the ground and those in the cockpits. If any of the three could even still be considered mere men, anyway. But Lotor’s money was on Shiro, given that the White Lion had been able to work with him to alter something as massive as the Atlas.

Lotor felt it when the short stalemate broke, the power washed out over him in waves. Across the field he saw Opal slow to a hover and knew Allura felt it as well.

“Stay back,” he warned her, opening the comm line he’d originally closed back up.

“What’s going on?” Allura asked worriedly. “What’s happening to him?”

“Nothing,” Lotor assured her. “He’s happening to them. We needed help, and the White Lion is helping.”

He pointedly avoided mentioning any of what had transpired yet. That could wait for later, once everyone was safe.

The two Komari moved as one, both reaching up to dig their fingers into the metal of their own chests just above the absorption plates. They tore open wide, gaping slashes, ripping their own pilot capsules free and crushing them into tangled hunks of mauled metal. Lotor felt the sudden cessation of power as the bodies the Formless inside were using were destroyed, leaving them with nothing to control on this plane.

One of the Komari knelt down next to Shiro, who climbed up and stepped into the opening created by the removed capsule. The bent and broken shards of metal folded back into place behind him, closing up as if nothing had ever happened.

Veins of blue light ran along the outer surface of both Komari a second later, and Lotor recognized the hum of alchemy as the mech was adjusted to suit its new pilot’s needs. The excess bulk of the shoulder casings, chest casing, and hip stabilizers turned into a silvery liquid, flowing along the mech’s surface to gather at its back. The protruding sensors on the sides of the head shifted up and away, separating from the main body to function as a standalone mechanism, floating around the head in a thin circlet dotted with sensor readers that resembled a jeweled halo.

The gathered metal at its back snapped outward, forming into silvery wings that erupted in crystal slats that resembled stylized feathers. They flashed out and wrapped around the mech itself like a shield, just as Honerva’s cruiser took its first shot at Shiro instead of one of the airborne ships. The crystals themselves started to glow as they absorbed the blast, and Lotor realized they were giant absorption plates, no doubt far more effective than the small plate initially placed in the mech’s chest.

Next to the shielded Komari, the second mech that White was controlling lowered to the ground and dropped to all fours. Like with the first, the excess metal around its frame seemed to become a thick liquid, flowing over the surface and reshaping the skin even as Lotor could hear the psyferite and steel frame locking into place in the form it was being forced into.

Finally, the outer layers on both mechs solidified as the changes finished, the harsh silver metal replaced by a skin of pearly white that looked soft and almost living: a winged humanoid form now piloted by Shiro and an accompanying beast in the form of a white lion almost as huge as Black.

“_Ready to go?_” Shiro’s voice came over the comm.

Lotor wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring. The alchemy was flawless and the transformations had undoubtedly taken only a few seconds, but he’d never personally been able to witness anything like it except for the formation of Voltron. Even under the circumstances it was fascinating, and even more so was the fact that both of these mechs now felt _alive. _

He could sense it, as if they were living and breathing creatures in their own right, and Shiro merely an organ. A living heart that kept the life force flowing.

“Ready,” Lotor replied, tensing as the white lion suddenly sprang forward.

Shiro took off straight upward, diverting attention and beginning to engage the enemy cruisers overhead. Lotor hit his boosters as the lion sprinted by, barely managing to get a grip on one of the ear protrusions on its hull as the ship launched itself into the air as well.

When he’d been told the ride wouldn’t be smooth, he certainly hadn’t thought he’d be clinging to the outside of a newly remodeled ship. He also hadn’t thought he would suddenly be treated to freefall as said ship was forced to engage in evasive maneuvers to avoid one of the three remaining Komar mechs.

“Gods, how is he piloting this?” Lotor breathed, clinging tightly to the hull as everything flipped upside down. “_Is_ he even piloting this? The steering is awful!”

“_Your comm is still open, I can hear you,_” Shiro warned.

“Good!”

The white lion suddenly did a barrel roll to avoid laserfire, and Lotor gritted is teeth as a stray blast hit the hull just a few feet from where he was hanging on. Opal’s appearance overhead was a saving grace, distracting the attacking mech long enough for the white lion to right itself and set a course for Honerva’s cruiser.

A few seconds later Opal reappeared, having ditched the now-confused Komar. The ship anchored to the side of the lion and the canopy slid open.

“_What in all the realities are you doing?_” Allura screeched, motioning for him to get in. “Are you insane?”

“I’m beginning to question!” Lotor admitted, carefully releasing his hold and making a sprint for the ship.

He managed to reach it just as the lion was forced to flip again to avoid laserfire, taking Opal with it. One moment there was smooth, pearly metal beneath him, the next there was only open sky between him and the far-off ground. Allura practically threw herself out of her seat, grabbing his hand and hauling him inside as the lion righted itself.

“What just happened out there?” She demanded as she closed Opal’s canopy. “You said the White Lion is doing this? Through Shiro somehow?”

“Um, yes,” Lotor answered, barely paying attention to her questions as his eyes went to her viewscreen. The lion was headed straight for the cruiser, and in doing so it was flying Opal in under the radar. It was far closer than Allura would have ever been able to get to the ship herself without being fired upon directly. “I need to get on that cruiser, _Ahlor_…when we get close enough I’m bailing out. You need to get far away from the fight once I’m gone.”

“Okay, now I know you’ve gone insane,” Allura said irritably, glancing back at him. “If you have to get onto that ship, then you have to get onto that ship. But I’m not going to let you do it yourself.”

She didn’t even give him a chance to argue. As the white lion reached its goal it did another roll, flipping over the top of the cruiser and turning upside down. Allura released Opal’s anchor, dropping the Sincline ship down in the shadow of the hulking white beast as the defending Komar mechs fired on it. After a few seconds the white lion tore off, and the two mechs followed it with weapons blazing.

Opal’s anchor locked onto the cruiser instead, and everything went still as she powered it down and dropped them completely off all enemy scanners. In the sudden calm following the uncomfortable rolling and dodging, Lotor now had a chance to feel mildly nauseous.

It didn’t last. Allura threw off her harness and turned in her seat, and started punching him in the helmet.

“Are you “handling it?” She demanded, forcing him to throw up his arms and try to defend. “Is this how you’re “handling it?” First you waltz yourself out into a war zone, then you try to traipse up to an enemy ship alone like you’re an invincible one-man army! _Men_!”

“I’m sorry!” Lotor wormed free of the cockpit, escaping Opal to land on the surface of Honerva’s cruiser, managing to put a bit of space between him and the very angry Queen bearing down on him. “I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have killed your comm line. I’m aware of my many tremendous shortcomings today, can we please discuss it later?”

“Oh, we’ll be discussing it later!” Allura replied, dropping down to land beside him and drawing her staff. “I do not appreciate being kept out of the loop and left with no information while you run around keeping secrets on your way out the door to your own execution!”

Lotor had reached one of the emergency escape hatches and was quietly accessing the overrides he knew Honerva wouldn’t have bothered to change. Allura’s words hit sharply home and made him come to a screeching halt, momentarily unable to push the day’s events out of his mind in favor of what he needed to do. He looked up at her angry face, and the image of the Atlas engulfed in flames as she lay pinned to the ground in its blast zone flashed through his head unbidden.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, softer this time as he stood back up.

He reached out to grab her shoulders and pull her close, wrapping her tightly in a hug and forcibly keeping himself from shaking. He knew he had to ignore everything that had happened so far and carry on until this battle was won, process all the shock and the horror later when everyone was safe, but he allowed himself this one brief moment of weakness. He could feel her tense in surprise, and her voice was practically dripping with confusion.

“It’s all right. Well, no, it’s not all right. It’s…we’ll discuss it later,” she repeated, flustered. “Now tell me what we’re doing here.”

“This ship has a cannon that works on the same principle as the Komar mechs,” Lotor answered, reluctantly letting her go and kneeling back down to quietly open the hatch. He waited for a moment to see if any alerts would go off, but most of the power seemed to be turned off to the majority of the ship. “It’s what disabled the Blue Lion when Shiro went to retrieve Adam, and its rapid-fire rate is fast enough to take down the Imperial fleet before it can do any damage. Shiro is taking the brunt of it for now, his modified Komari is likely the only vessel on this planet that it won’t neutralize. We have to take down the druids on this ship and disable that cannon so he can help with the fight.”

“What about Honerva?” Allura asked pensively. “I saw her arrive down in the field, but I lost sight of her when the fight started.”

“She’s gone,” Lotor replied.

He rose and offered her a hand to lower her down into the ship first, and could clearly see on her face that she wanted to ask how he was so sure. He couldn’t blame her, he had seen firsthand that Honerva was a danger that couldn’t be overstated.

“Allura, something happened here,” Lotor admitted. “Something very dire, many on our side were killed. Honerva retreated once she believed her enemies were dead, but the White Lion is using Shiro as a vessel to undo the last half a varga and rewrite it in our favor. That’s all I have time to tell you right now, so please trust me when I say I know for a fact this ship _must_ be stopped and that Honerva is out of play.”

She didn’t appear too thrilled with what he’d said, but if Allura was anything it was smart and adaptable. Even if she didn’t entirely understand what he meant or how the events he described had happened, she had seen enough of this war and was steeped enough in alchemy to know that not everything was always crystal clear in the moment.

“I trust you,” she said with a nod, hooking her staff on her back and taking his hands. “If you say this ship has to go down, then it has to go down.”

Down below, there was a glimmer of orange light from the ground. The particle barrier around the Atlas began to glow so brightly he could see it in clear detail even from here. The laserfire that had been raining down on it was beginning to ricochet, as the unfathomable power flowing from two freshly born Infinite Zero crystals was diverted completely to the shields. Just past the net of light he could see the Lorelia, safely under its protection and descending to make berth.

Shiro’s Komar mech was dancing through the sky, drawing the fire of Honerva’s cruiser while the white lion ship helped it wreak havoc with the three remaining Komari. The Imperial armada was fully engaged, raining fire and brimstone on any faction ships unfortunate enough to not have turned tail and run. On the far side of the northeastern sky, a faction cruiser began turning on its neighbors as Griffin and their own boarded soldiers wrestled control from the barely-experienced crew.

The next few minutes would prove integral to this fight. Lotor gripped Allura’s hands and lowered her gently down into the darkness of the ship, dropping down next to her and pulling the hatch back closed. They both ran scans, finding the atmosphere within just as toxic as Duchesne and Kuro had described it being before.

“I think I can do this on my own,” Lotor murmured, flipping on his night vision and turning to find Allura in the dark. “But whether I need your help or not, I want it. There are at least seven druids here, all of them rift creatures controlling Altean bodies they’ve drained the life out of.”

Allura drew her staff, and Lotor concentrated on solidifying the quintessence in the air around him into a sword, arming himself for what was about to be a very one-sided fight if she brought all of her extensive power to the table. She finally broke into an almost excited smile at the sight of his weapon, pleased that he had finally managed to do _something_ after trying for so long even if it wasn’t technically alchemy.

She gripped her staff and it started to glow, threads of pale blue light running along it to reinforce it in a way that would pack a far more powerful punch against the enemies they were about to surprise.

“Ready?” He asked, knowing she was even before he received her nod in response. “Let’s go make these things sorry they ever came into our universe.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“It’s like watching a bunch of cartoon clowns,” James said softly, leaning against the railing that overlooked two of the lower decks. “Like, it doesn’t even look real. I could probably shine a laser pointer down there and have half of them chase it.”

Although technically an officer, James was ultimately a fighter craft pilot. The strikers they had brought up had carried other pilots, but also Atlas ground-trained soldiers and non-pilot Alteans who were hand-to-hand ready. He hadn’t counted, but he estimated somewhere around a hundred people had been smuggled from the grounded ships below up to this one.

This one, which was basically a glorified pirate ship. From down on the ground these faction groups seemed daunting, but an up-close look revealed the truth; there were a few badass nasties in control giving orders, but the majority of the crew was made up of grunts who were either Imperial military rejects or straight up criminals with no better prospects.

Their small force didn’t have to overwhelm or outfight their enemy, James and Nikolaev had stirred up a nice bit of mayhem early on and they were so busy wrecking the joint they barely even noticed the arriving strikers. Nikolaev had brought the ships into one of the otherwise unused bays, where only a few Galra had been hanging out avoiding doing any work. They had been easily overpowered.

There were people in the newly arrived flight crew who knew better how to command and fly a large cruiser than James did. He’d wanted to join them in storming the bridge and all that other fun stuff, but ultimately he was done. He was hurting, he was exhausted, and he was injured. He and Nikolaev had done their part, and now they remained here on one of the sealed-off upper decks, sitting on the edge, leaning against the railing to watch the chaos below and waiting to see what would happen.

There were competent people running this mission from here on out. Either they would survive this fight or they wouldn’t, but James no longer had any say in how it turned out. The ball had been passed and he was benched to wait and see how the game ended.

When he got no answer to his comment he tilted his head a bit to look over at the man sitting next to him. Nikolaev also had his legs hanging over the edge of the deck, leaning against the railing and absently watching all of the in-fighting downstairs. Or at least, he had been. Now he was staring straight ahead, his unblinking eyes focused on a point somewhere out past the far wall. He was frowning as if he was concentrating on something that James couldn’t see.

James snapped his fingers in front of Nikolaev’s face. It would be just his luck if the guy just up and died while sitting there, leaving him to explain what happened. For a moment Nikolaev didn’t react, then he slowly blinked and re-animated.

“No laser pointers,” he replied, proving he had, in fact, been listening. He hauled himself up from the floor, using the railing as leverage. “Maybe throw a grenade down there, see how that plays out. We should take a walk to the engine room.”

James looked back down at the mass of fighting Galra and tried imagine the damage tossing a grenade down there right now would do. Nikolaev was a fucking _dark_ man.

“Why are we taking a walk to the engine room?” James asked, pulling himself up to fall into step with Nikolaev, who wasn’t moving terribly quickly. He was probably at the end of his own rope at this point, the better option would probably have been for both of them to find an empty quarters somewhere to lie down.

“Because why not?”

There was a howl of triumph from down below and James broke away to peek back over the railing. They had now stepped back and formed a circle, in which two larger Galra were now fighting while everyone else cheered their chosen fighter on.

“And then they spontaneously broke out into bum fights” isn’t something I ever thought I would have to put into a military report,” James sighed, stepping back away from the edge. Nikolaev was over at one of the still-sealed doors now. “Anyway, we should just find somewhere quiet to hang out for a little bit. Just, you know. Sit still and not die. All of the Alteans are taking over the ship, we don’t have anyone who can reprogram the doors to open for us—”

Nikolaev did something James couldn’t see to the scanner panel, and the door slid open.

“Trade secret,” he said immediately, before James could ask him how he’d gotten it open.

“Of course it is,” James groaned, lamenting the demise of what had probably been his only chance to get a moment of rest in all the madness. “I guess we’re taking a walk to the engine room.”

The hallway was dark, in that way Galra tended to like it. There was light, but it was a deep purple shade that came from the bastardized quintessence that was used to run these things. It was empty except for them, the technology that allowed a finite number of Galra to take over most of the known universe meaning that these ships were hugely automated and higher decks were often mostly empty.

The quiet and the dark mixed together to make for a very creepy atmosphere, the hallway both ahead of them and back behind them eventually falling into a darkness that the dim lights weren’t able to illuminate. But it was made even creepier by the fact that Nikolaev walked along humming like he was on a Sunday stroll.

“You are way too at home in this cave,” James accused. “Are we even headed toward the engine room?”

“Yeah, they’re on the fifth level toward the middle of the ships,” Nikolaev answered easily. “You don’t find this soothing? It’s nice and quiet, no fighting here. And really well-built, you can’t hear any of the laserfire going on outside.”

It was indeed nice and quiet, almost peaceful. If the dark purple glow had been more like the bright blue one on the cruiser the Alteans had taken over, James might have found it calming. But it wasn’t, it was just them and the dark and their footfalls echoing ahead and behind into the shadows.

There were two more doors they had to go through before they reached their destination. The first was to a lift that would take them to the fifth level, and the second was the door to the engine room itself. The first, Nikolaev once again opened by doing something to the scan panel he refused to let James see. The second was already open, the three Galra who had been manning the engine room tied up in a corner while two Alteans took their place. James recognized both, they had been rescued from captivity on Colony One and had been part of a group that had worked with Earth engineers over the last few months.

“What’s this?” James asked, wandering toward a large cylinder of glowing purple liquid in the center of the room.

One of the Alteans, a woman a little older than him, came to stand beside him.

“This is processed quintessence,” she answered. “The Galra do something to it after they gather it, some kind of enrichment. You probably can’t feel it, but it reeks of druidic energy…possibly something that makes it burn slower and cuts down on refueling periods.”

“They don’t use balmera crystals?” James asked, craning his neck to look all the way up to the top of the huge tube. “The cruiser you guys are using has a balmera crystal.”

“They can use either,” the woman answered. “They generally run on quintessence, but have a backup connection for a balmera crystal in case they can’t get to a refueling station in good time. This quintessence is the stolen life force of a planet, we can’t in good conscience use a ship that runs on that, so we were using the crystal hookup in ours. The Galra consider it obsolete technology and only use it in emergencies.”

“Oh.” James glanced around to see where Nikolaev had gone, but he didn’t see him. Undoubtedly poking around in the inner workings of the ship’s engine, idle curiosity was the only reason he probably wanted to come up here. “Is there a huge difference in functionality?”

“Kind of,” she answered.

“Different strengths,” the other Altean, a young man, said from where he sat at a console. “Direct quintessence pours power directly into the ship’s assault capabilities, it’s what gives these ships their firepower. But even with their shields they can take a lot of damage. A crystal refracts and disperses power, spreading it out more evenly and making it good for strengthening shields and evenly powering engines for speed.”

“So the quintessence gives you strong and mean, and the crystal gives you fast and safe,” James inferred. He didn’t know what he would ever do with that information, but it was kind of interesting to have it.

The floor lurched and several monitors in the room started flashing red, indicating that the cruiser was now actively engaging in battle with other ships in the sky. James let out a squawk and grabbed an empty console seat, fighting himself into it and throwing on the harness. The two Alteans did the same, their fingers flying over displays as they adjusted different levels of whatever-the-hell this ship had to keep the ship’s power running in line with what those on the bridge were doing.

The man turned on the larger monitors, showing what was going on outside. James recognized three of those damned Altean mechs and that cruiser Honerva had been using, and felt a chill run up his spine. He was in no hurry to deal with that woman again in any capacity.

But neither the mechs nor the ship paid any attention to them as the fight broke out amongst faction cruisers in this part of the sky. In fact, there was a fourth mech that James at first mistook to be Sincline, but he realized his mistake as it flew more clearly into the range of the ship’s sensors.

This one had far more human proportions, with wings that glittered with crystalline feathers and a soft sheen of pearl shimmer running across its surface. It moved differently than even the most agile of mechs, like a living, breathing thing.

“I have life signs coming from that mech,” the woman said breathlessly. “From the pilot too, but also from the mech itself. What is that thing? Is it ours or theirs?”

“There are two of them,” the man answered her. “One looks sort of like the Lion ships belonging to the Earth pilots.”

James sat up straighter, scanning the monitor. Sure enough there was a second ship, this one slightly smaller than the Black Lion and the same pearlescent white as the large, angel-like one. But this one didn’t move like any of the Lion ships, this one moved like a real, living cat.

What is this thing became a very valid question. So did the problem of whose side those things were on.

The ship took a huge hit and the sensors following the two strange machines were damaged, losing their connection. James grit his teeth and held on tightly to keep from getting thrown out of his seat.

If a balmera crystal was what provided top notch shielding, they sure could have used one right now. These Galra builds were ridiculously stupid…who built a ship to run on a power source that gave fire power at the price of sacrificing defense?

James was thrown against his restraints by the next impact, knocking the wind out of him. When he was thrown back the other way he slammed his head, no longer protected by a helmet, against the back of the seat. For a brief moment he felt like he’d gone cross-eyed.

Better shields would definitely have been better than stronger weapons in a battle like this, where it was one cruiser against at least a handful of others. They could only shoot at one at a time, but they needed to defend against all of them. Too bad there wasn’t a spare crystal laying around in storage or something.

_A spare crystal._

“Hey! Quintessence gives you strong, a crystal gives you fast!” James called, scrambling out of his harness so he could jerk up his pant leg and pry open the compartment on his prosthetic. He pulled out the Infinite Zero crystal, holding it up. “What do you get if you have both?”

“What is _that_?” The man asked, trying to hang on tightly to a guard rail while still leaning over to take the offered crystal. “Wait…isn’t this the Atlas’ power crystal? Dr. Holt showed us this!”

“Can you hook it up?” James asked.

“How?” The woman asked, scrambling over to get a look at it. “It’s so small…how does it go into a Balmera connection?”

“I don’t know, it just kind of did it itself when we first got it,” James admitted.

“It has its own microgravitational field,” Nikolaev called from somewhere back behind the quintessence vat. “It stabilizes itself equidistant between the balmera connectors and transmits power through contactless waves.”

“…oh. Right, of course, how could I not remember that,” James said flatly, shooting an annoyed look in that direction. He turned back to the Alteans, who had been distracted by something on the monitors, and repeated the information louder. “It’s got its own microwavable field and stands equatorial on the connectors to give wireless power.”

“Mic…microwavable…?” The woman looked at him blankly.

“I think you just like…stick it in there,” James tried.

Both Alteans looked down at the crystal. They looked up at each other and shrugged, bounding off past the quintessence vats to where he assumed the old balmera hookups would be. James tried to follow them, but he was hit by a wave of dizziness he attributed to the nasty smack on the head he’d just gotten, and he was forced to fight his way back to a seat and strap himself in.

It was a rough ride for a few more minutes, then suddenly everything brightened. The dark purple light he had silently complained to himself about earlier faded into a bright white, and monitors across the entire room began to flicker on. But even more noticeable, the rocking and lurching stopped as power readings for the ship’s shields rose.

“_We just got a huge power surge up here!_” Nadia’s voice came over the intercom as the two Alteans came running back to their stations, looking positively gleeful. “_What’s going on down there?_”

“Magic!” The man exclaimed, grinning ear to ear as he took in the readings across the monitors. “We’ve got the power to seal the Galra down in the lower decks, fire everything we’ve got at those other ships, and still keep up a particle-barrier-level shield!”

“_Oh man, that is exactly the kind of thing I love to hear!_” Nadia practically crowed. _“Hang onto your hats down there, this party’s really getting started!_”

James felt urgently sick then, the full events of the day so far combined with the rough handling and his aching head all culminating in him finally giving in and crashing. He was vaguely aware of the Altean man coming to his side and saying something to him, and hearing the woman urgently saying something to Nadia.

For a few minutes he slipped in and out, everything a confusing mish-mash of sound and color as he fought as hard as he could to stay conscious.

Eventually the fit passed. His vision faded back in and he found himself lying on the engine room floor, now far steadier with the shields in place. Ryan was kneeling on the floor with James’ head resting on his lap, holding something damp and cool to his forehead and watching the consoles.

Ina and Nadia were there, doing their part from here. He could hear them exchanging words with the bridge, the battle outside playing out onscreen.

In the far background, Honerva’s cruiser was hurtling toward the ground, black smoke streaming from it. All across the planet, faction ships and strikers were raining down in fiery pieces, many of them maneuvering into position to jump away from the planet and retreat. That weird new mech was standing out in the frozen fields, the ground around it littered with pieces of Honerva’s three Altean mechs. As James watched it dug its fingers into one, ripping the pilot capsule free and crushing it between both hands to destroy the druid inside.

“Hey, he’s awake,” Ryan called.

Ina and Nadia turned away from the monitors, brightening when they saw his eyes open. They hurried over, Nadia leaning in so close James could barely see her properly.

“Personal space,” he croaked.

“Yeah, he’s definitely still alive,” Ryan noted.

“Moderate to severe concussion,” Ina warned. “He probably has internal injuries, given the visible bruising. Being awake doesn’t translate to being well.”

“Hey, stop,” Nadia warned as James tried to sit up, pushing him back down. “Just hold tight, all right? The fireworks are just wrapping up, we’re gonna get you back to the medical bay ASAP.”

James wanted to argue, but it was hard to force out the words. He was exhausted and everything hurt, and all he really wanted to do was go to sleep.

He fought that urge, but he didn’t try to move again. Instead he remained still, focusing all of his remaining strength on staying awake and aware. It was perhaps another half hour until the last of the faction ships had made a run for it, with several Imperial cruisers hot on their tails, and transmissions were sent between the bridge, the Atlas, and some of the Imperial ships to arrange for the Galra locked in the lower decks to be apprehended upon landing. Eventually the skies on the monitors began to clear, and the cruiser began its descent to the fields outside the colony.

At some point, James lost the fight and blacked out. He woke to a harsh flickering, and found lights flying by overhead.

He was on a gurney. Still on the cruiser, but not for long. Someone in an Atlas flight suit leaned over him and pressed an oxygen mask to his face, and the ceiling of the cruiser gave way to the sky of outside. There was a lot of action here, but no real noise he could hear in the absence of any air. Then the sky was gone and lights rushed by again, as his field of vision was taken up by the ceiling of an Atlas hallway.

The mask was removed once they were back inside, and the two medics with him removed their helmets to reveal faces he recognized but couldn’t quite put names to. One of them leaned over, flashing a small light in his face as the other kept the gurney moving.

Can you tell me your name? What’s today’s date? Who’s the President? How many fingers am I holding up? James did his best to answer the questions, simple questions he knew shouldn’t be so hard to answer, but by the time the gurney came to a stop in the medical bay he felt like he had been given a test and failed.

“He’s breathing okay on his own,” one of the medics noted to a doctor who came over. “Some broken bones, possible internal bleeding. We’re going to need scans to know for sure. Seems mostly lucid, but definitely at least one nasty head injury.”

James made a face and groaned at the thought of having to go through scans. Things were different now, they had healing pods that did that instead of MRI scanners, but he still hated feeling like a sardine crammed into a can. He let his head fall back on the gurney, glancing through the glass into the room next to the one he lay in. He realized he was up in the officer’s quarantine bay, not down in the main medical bay with the other soldiers.

Nikolaev was in the next room, the same one he’d been in when James had first left. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be intubated, and was already changed out of the flight suit and back into a hospital gown.

“When did he get back here?” James wondered, his voice thick. He couldn’t remember seeing Nikolaev when he’d woken up on the engineering room floor.

“Hm?” The doctor asked absently as he finished signing off on sending James for a scan.

“Him. Niko,” James clarified. “Is he okay? Was he messed up before the cruiser shields went up?”

The doctor glanced back, then shook his head.

“Lieutenant Nikolaev went into a coma shortly after the faction cruisers began arriving,” he answered. “Measles-induced encephalitis, it’s a very rare complication but it does happen.”

“That’s not right,” James muttered groggily, reaching up to rub his eyes with both hands. “He was out there. He was at the power station with me, and up on the cruiser.”

“Lieutenant Nikolaev?” The doctor asked skeptically. “Captain Griffin, I’m afraid you’re suffering from a serious head injury, as well as some blood loss. The Lieutenant has been unconscious for some time now, he hasn’t been anywhere but in that bed.”

That threw James for a loop more than anything else so far. He suddenly began to question the entire last few hours, wondering how badly injured he really was if he’d thought it had been Nikolaev out there with him. Even more confusing, if Niko had been unconscious here the whole time, then who had really been out there?

A flurry of noise from the doorway drew his attention as more people rushed in. Another gurney, this one holding an unmoving Shiro. Allura and Lotor were right in its wake, both of them a mess of soot and bruises and scratches, looking as if they’d walked through a mine field.

“I want to say he’ll be okay with some rest, but I really don’t know,” Allura said worriedly to one of the medics. “We had to pry him out of that mech, he wasn’t moving when we got to him.”

“He’s breathing,” an accompanying medic declared. “Heart rate is very sluggish. No outward signs of injuries, we’re going to need a scan and fast…”

James didn’t hear anything else they said, his own gurney was wheeled through another doorway and into the wide medical lift, the doors closing behind him and cutting off any further sounds. He tried to stay awake, tried to ask if either of the medical techs at his side knew what was going on, but he was now past the point of no return. He was so tired and everything hurt, and he finally gave up the fight and slipped into a quiet unconsciousness of his own.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter with a trigger warning for cancer/dying (thank heaven). The section is marked with a [[TW]] tag, but is not graphic and is the one tagged section that contains an important story element. There is a summary of this section at the end of the chapter for those who would still prefer not to read it, so if you would rather skip it then jump down to the chapter end when you hit the "TW" tag so you still know what's going on.
> 
> Happy Memorial Day to everyone in the US! And everyone, take care and stay safe!

Gold was accustomed to being summoned for advice, being available to those who needed aid was about three quarters of his job description. Being summoned by a Guardian, however, was not something he had ever foreseen happening to him. Least of all at a time like this, when he was so weak and personally distraught.

But his duty didn’t change just because he was hurt or upset, the universes marched on and existence continued…or at least, it still did at the moment. So he tiredly accepted the invitation and let himself be pulled into the foreign pocket of astral plane where the Black Guardian waited.

The place was unexpectedly dark, and Gold was immediately on guard. Internally of course, outwardly he remained serene and calm, and politely feigned disinterest in the scenery around him to focus on its creator.

Black Guardians were the gatekeepers of the Air element, they lived in the floating caves up in the starry skies of the deeper quintessence field. By their nature they always tended to be serious, and as the largest breed and only one capable of flight they had advantages that had helped them maneuver themselves into the position of leaders.

He had never met one in person before, so he didn’t know how reliable anything else he had been told was. Especially given that this particular Black Guardian seemed…troubled.

The ground looked like it had once been reflective but was now clouded over, and the sky above was so sparsely populated with stars it almost could have passed for the endless and empty night of the Borderlands. There was nothing as far as the eye could see except two chairs, undoubtedly summoned specifically for this meeting. Black sat in one of them, dressed in casual robes, his long hair down and hanging over his shoulders.

“I had hoped you would still be semi-conscious,” Black said approvingly as Gold approached. “Am I correct in assuming you don’t have much time left?”

His tone of voice was polite, undercutting the rudeness of his words. Gold met sweetness with sweetness, giving him a tired smile as Black gestured to the second chair. He sat down with his back straight and head high, ignoring the nagging urge to slouch down. He could feel the hum of power running through this space and knew Black had sealed him in; apparently he wasn’t allowed to leave until the Guardian got what he wanted.

“It is what it is,” Gold answered easily. “I’m not built to be here, I knew the risks when I came.”

“You overextended yourself on the shadow layer,” Black mused. “I’d hoped using the Black Lion as a temporary avatar would alleviate some of the stress of that debacle.”

“It did, it simply takes far more power than most would think to stop and reverse time. It’s not technically supposed to be done, even on just a single layer. The price for it is high.”

“Hm.”

Black regarded him thoughtfully. It was his first time being face to face with a Gold as well, most likely, and he was probably shuffling through every stereotype about Reapers he’d grown up with to try avoiding being so blunt he didn’t get whatever it was he wanted.

Gold regarded him in turn. The white strip running through his hair, coupled with some barely-noticeable pale splotches on his already light skin, spoke of a failed Ascension at some point. Gold had seen one or two of those in his time, they weren’t pretty.

Black saw him looking and gave a tight smile, reaching up to twirl the white strip around one finger.

“It’s exactly what you think,” he confirmed. “But don’t be fooled into believing I lack skill…there’s another who already has the title of White and he’s not terribly interested in sharing. Trying to take that mantle from him—or even just share part of it—is terribly difficult.”

“I’m very rarely fooled into believing anything,” Gold answered easily. “But that aside, please explain what you mean. Why would he have anything to do with your failure? You talk as if the pool of power is finite.”

Black cocked his head to the side slightly, a faint frown turning down his mouth, and Gold took that to mean it was exactly what he believed.

“You think you failed to ascend because someone else has a hold on all the available power,” Gold deduced. “The White Lion that’s prancing around here, specifically. That’s an unfortunate, and incorrect, belief.”

“I’m one of the most advanced students my pride has to offer,” Black said irritably. “The only way I could fail would be if someone else blocked me from succeeding.”

“Then you must also believe I’m the only Gold?” Gold asked. The look on Black’s face said this was exactly what he’d thought. “I’m not. There are five of us currently, and several more in training. This power comes from within, you’re as powerful on the outside as you are on the inside. Perhaps you simply aren’t as strong in spirit as you want to believe you are.”

It was a harsh truth for this Guardian to hear, he could tell. He sounded like somebody who had been very accomplished throughout his life, learning that he didn’t make the cut at something clearly stung.

“But, weakness doesn’t mean a spirit can’t become stronger,” Gold warned before Black could get snappish. “It’s through failure that we learn, and strength comes from accepting the lessons. But I’m not here so you can hear words of wisdom, I’m here because you want to fast track yourself to Ascension and you don’t have anywhere else to look for help. I get it. I’m nice, not stupid.”

“And I’m relying on the fact that you’re not stupid,” Black allowed. “The arrival of these three druids in those mechs just hammers home how dangerous this entire situation is getting. The bad guys have all the firepower, the good guys need more.”

“I would classify you as less of a good guy, more of a going-down-the-wrong-path guy,” Gold warned. “What you want has a cost you might not be able to afford.”

“Are you refusing to help me?” Black asked. “Even now, while you’re fading and the other Reaper is dead? Our numbers are dwindling.”

“Almost dead, not dead yet,” Gold said sharply. “Have a little bit of respect. And no, I’m not refusing. It’s not in our beliefs to refuse to teach, Ascension is open to everyone to attempt. I’m just making you aware that you have some not-so-minor flaws that might make what you want difficult. Fix those flaws and you’ll have a much easier time.”

Black didn’t look convinced. But then, nobody wanted to be told they weren’t as amazing as they thought they were, some pushback was only to be expected.

“Sacrifice is the sacrament of the three gods,” Gold said. “I don’t know how closely Guardians follow the tenets of their goddess, but we still live by our god’s words. To gain something like power, which isn’t a necessity to live and thrive, you must be willing to make real sacrifices.

“This is a failsafe to make sure that only people who understand responsibility can advance. The last thing anybody wants in a fair world is for the strong to be the kind of people who enslave the weak instead of protecting them. You need to be willing to give up something of value.”

His tiredness got the better of him, and Gold let himself slouch a bit. Black was not going to take any of his warnings seriously, but it wasn’t his place to police him. He had advised, the other entity was grown enough to take responsibility for his choices, that was the end of his guidance.

“Ascension is based on the law of three,” Gold said. “There are three points on the spectrum. There are three gods. There are three child races. Each of those races is broken down into five elements, yes, but when those five combine they form a sixth branch of magic. Solar, Lunar, and Stellar.

“You’ve undoubtedly studied all five of your native elements, and the fact that you’ve nearly ascended means you know them well. Ascension will happen for you when two things occur at once: you perform a feat that uses all five of those elements, and you pay the cost necessary. The piece you’ve been missing is that you need to be using all five…Ascension is the acquisition of a new element, in your case the Solar element. You have five building blocks you need to put together to form the sixth. When you can put them all together and see the larger picture, and understand that it’s something different on its own, you’ll become a White….part of the sixth Guardian pride.”

This was news to Black, clearly. He looked a mix of intrigued and surprised as he finally learned this “secret” nobody had ever told him about.

“White isn’t a Red? He’s not still a Fire?” Black asked, leaning forward in his seat. “Those before him, they weren’t just accomplished Airs or Waters or Earths?”

“Ascension is a rebirth as something new,” Gold replied. “It’s a step up to the next level. White is…a White. He’s a Solar elemental. He can use the five Guardian elements at will because they’re all components of Solar, but his element goes far beyond those. That’s why you’ve been unable to ascend, you’ve been assuming that doing so just meant getting really good at the five elements you knew. But it’s not, it’s taking them and combining them into something greater.”

“So you’re truly a Gold,” Black inferred. “No longer an Iron or Silver or whatever you were, just a Gold, full stop? You’re not a Blood or a Lightning elemental?”

“Lunar,” Gold replied. “And a Sentinel would ascend to become a Stellar elemental. Theoretically, one could ascend a second and third time, if they could commit to fully mastering the other race’s elements. Perhaps, once all three of the higher elements are mastered, one might even ascend a fourth time to combine them all.”

“What’s at that level?” Black asked, a little to eagerly for Gold’s taste. Truly, the warnings that power came at a cost had gone in one ear and out the other. “What’s higher than a White, Gold, and Onyx?”

“Probably nothing,” Gold tried to brush the question off. “Like I said, it’s theoretical. It’s the kind of thing philosophically tossed back and forth in conversation, that’s all. We refer to this ultimate element as Kosmos, but that’s just to give it a name in discussion. It’s not necessarily real, but in times of turmoil it gives us a level of spiritual purity to aspire to.”

“Someone must have tried to reach it at some point,” Black reasoned, latching onto the topic and refusing to let it go. “Surely there must be some information on it, some kind of study.”

“Power has a price,” Gold said yet again, feeling as if he were repeating himself pointlessly. “The cost of only a second Ascension, not even going as far as a third or fourth, would be astronomical. Eventually one hits a point where they have nothing else to give up and nothing else to protect, and the only drive to continue is greed. Bad things happen if you keep going past that.”

“Hm.”

Black sat back in his chair, looking thoughtful. Gold knew what was going to happen, he had seen it before. First, he would come up with a thousand and one reasons to justify why he needed more power, telling himself in a thousand different ways it was to help protect others or win this war. Then he would begin trying again, this time with correct instructions on how to proceed.

He would succeed to an extent, simply having correct information would do that, but those small successes would lead him to believe that none of this was as hard as he had been told. He would keep pushing, beyond the universe’s tolerance for his true goals, and then he would fall.

But that was not Gold’s responsibility to referee. He had offered his wisdom, the taking of which was a very important step toward success, and it had been rebuffed. Balance would restore itself.

Because power didn’t just have a cost…power had a life of its own. Nobody else needed to be involved, the power Black sought would, in the end, be his judge, his jury, and ultimately his executioner.

“That’s all the advice I have to impart,” Gold declared. “The rules and methods for Ascending are few and clear, do with them what you will. Am I correct in assuming that information was the payment you intended to extract for allowing me to temporarily use your ship during the fight?”

“You’re correct,” Black confirmed.

“Then I’ll consider us even,” Gold said politely, pushing himself up out of the chair. “Oh, one more thing.”

Black was looking thoughtfully down at the floor. He brought his gaze up to Gold, raising an eyebrow questioningly.

“One of the gods smiled on you the day you failed but lived to tell about it,” Gold warned. “Someone saved you, and gave you the gift of being able to walk away and continue living. But the gods are gone now, and nobody is watching out for you anymore. Don’t fail again.”

The proper thing would have been to wait for an answer, then allow his host to open the way for him to leave. Instead, Gold gave an indifferent wave and removed himself, shattering the wards Black had woven in an attempt to hold him prisoner. There was no real need to do that, the Guardian would have let him go now, but Gold wanted to make it clear that he had been doing the other entity a favor out of the goodness of his heart and had not been manipulated into anything.

As Black’s astral plane receded, Gold’s senses were once again replaced with the split awareness that had become his life since allowing himself to be removed from the part-Altean boy. He was partially aware of being in the Garrison lab, lying dully at the bottom of the containment cylinder that had so far allowed him to survive with its artificial vibration fields. Nobody else was down there, he was understandably forgotten in the current chaos. The power had failed in these labs and the energy field that had kept him from basically dissolving in a universe where he wasn’t meant to exist was gone. He could have survived here for a little while like this anyway, but only if he hadn’t already exhausted himself.

And he was partially here, in the false constructions that bridged the physical and incorporeal worlds. Now that he was no longer anchored to Black’s space, Gold traced the threads of his own magic back to a different little corner of the astral plane. Not his, he wasn’t strong enough here to create his own, but to one he’d helped strengthen and solidify.

It was dark on the hill. The stars were completely gone, and with them their ambient light, and Gold was forced to light his own way with a small spark of lightning dancing across his fingers. The path was gone as well, grown over with grass and weeds that had then died and rotted away, leaving only barren, dry earth. There was nothing left of the trees except the barest traces of ancient roots poking up from the dust, the rest of them weathered away as if they had been out here exposed for millennia.

The cottage was in ruins, just a large stone foundation with its walls long since crumbled, a pile of rocks marking where the grand fireplace had once been. The shelves were gone, the books had rotted, the glass of broken bottles and vials had worn away to nothing. The chair where Gold had sat just a short time prior was nowhere to be seen as he walked over to that particular spot and looked out.

The very world on which the cottage once sat was broken. If he forced his light brighter he could see out farther, where once solid ground was now little more than a collection of floating remnants. Gold could not fuel an astral plane if its maker was no longer alive to sustain it, and with each passing minute this place crumbled more.

Gold sighed and stepped back from the edge, starting as his foot hit something heavy and solid. He leaned down to pick it up and held it up to the light, giving it a little shake. A jar of small, colorful pebbles, the only thing in this disintegrating plane that remained unbroken and new.

Something important enough for Kuro to wrap the last of his will around, to hold close and protect until the very end finally faded that away too.

* * * * * * * * * *

[[ T W ]]

“Do you think it’s over?”

“I don’t know. Nothing’s happened since that explosion, so maybe.”

“No cell service, so the towers must be down. I wonder if they have a satellite line, we need to call Mom and Dad.”

The two voices did their best to whisper softly, under the impression that Curtis was asleep and couldn’t hear them. He was not and he could, especially since Roxanne hadn’t been born with an indoor voice. He was simply too tired to do much more than ignore them.

Everything hurt. It hurt in the way it had for a very long time, a body-wide ache that ate away at his strength and tired him out far faster than others. Only now the hurt was much more pronounced, the ache running so deep he could feel it in all his bones.

This tired was also different from before, a weariness that wasn’t just for sleep. He felt like holding on was becoming a mild torture, and he wanted so very badly to finally let go and get some rest.

In a lifetime of being relied on to make life or death decisions, this was the last one he ever needed to make. All he had to do was decide when it was time and stop holding on, stop dragging this out unnecessarily and let everyone start the process of moving on. He had accomplished a lot in his relatively short, human life, he’d earned this chance to let it end peacefully and quietly.

But Curtis held on anyway. Not out of fear, he was beginning to look forward to no longer being in pain all the time, to no longer feeling like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. It was simply in his nature to approach this choice the way he approached all other decisions he had to make. Some were made instantly, in the heat of the moment and under intense pressure, but when he had the chance he was a methodical thinker.

He already knew today was the end, but he still had control of exactly when. And like many decisions, once this one was made and acted upon there was no going back. Once he closed his eyes for the last time that was it, and it wasn’t a choice to be made lightly.

His sisters had been given their chance to say goodbye, as had Gail, Raina and Sarah now that the fighting was over. Adam had been brought in by wheelchair—which he’d been strapped into for his own good because he kept walking on an obviously injured leg—and the other Paladins had made quiet stops in as well. His parents knew he’d been getting to the end of his life but they hadn’t seen him yet today, and maybe it was a selfish thing to do but he didn’t want them to have a chance to speak to him. He loved them too much to make them watch one of their children fade in his last moments, better to let them remember him speaking animatedly to them over video the last time he’d given them a call.

A nurse came in and he opened his eyes a crack. She gave them all a soft smile and came over to his bedside to check the monitors.

“How are you feeling?” She asked gently.

“Like I tried to fight an eighteen-wheeler and lost,” Curtis answered dryly. “Tired, mostly. Achey.”

“Your medical records say you’ve been prescribed morphine for the last month,” the nurse replied with an understanding nod, holding up a small bottle she’d brought in. “I’m sure it’s far past time for your next dose. Would you like some to help with the pain?”

“Absolutely,” Curtis sighed with relief as she opened the bottle and tapped a capsule out.

Roxanne poured him a cup of water from the pitcher by his bed and helped him swallow it. The nurse made sure he was comfortable with the pillows he had and that the room was a good temperature, then quietly left them alone again.

Curtis’ prescription was a relatively low dose, just something to help him manage pain rather than to completely overwhelm it. He had never liked taking more medication than necessary, but he stuck to his prescribed dosage religiously. Sarah knew what she was talking about, and he wouldn’t second guess her. He was certainly glad for it now, when he most needed the relief so he could finally, truly relax.

He closed his eyes, and his sisters went back to talking quietly. It took about half an hour, maybe a little longer, but Curtis felt it when the medication finally started to build in his bloodstream and actively dull the ache in his bones. It let him feel some measure of physical comfort, and made it easier to doze off.

It could have been over at any moment, as soon as he chose it to be, but he continued to hold out.

At first he didn’t know why. There was just a tiny, nagging feeling that he’d missed something, some final thing that he wanted to do. Logically he knew he was done and that anything he hadn’t finished would be picked up by someone else, but it still held him back from slipping off into sleep.

Curtis slipped in and out of a light rest, every now and then jolting himself awake as he felt full unconsciousness coming on. He was ready, his family was ready, but something just wasn’t right.

He kept coming back to Ryou. Of the people coming through, they had all conspicuously avoided mentioning Ryou’s whereabouts, and Curtis hadn’t asked. The other man’s final words over the comm had said it all, he hadn’t expected to walk away from the fight. There was nothing to be changed about it now, what was done was done, and Curtis had accepted that he wasn’t going to be the only one who died today.

But something still wasn’t right about it.

Curtis could feel someone else in the room in the last hour or two, a familiar presence he couldn’t fully see or identify. It was one of the reasons he knew he was getting close, as the feminine energy grew steadily more noticeable as time passed. Things that the living didn’t see were becoming more and more clear as his body was beginning to be left behind, Ryou had explained that to him.

And yet, the female presence was the only one Curtis felt. And that meant something was wrong.

If Ryou had died in the fight, he would be nearby. There was no way Curtis wouldn’t feel him, he knew from the wings he had seen last night that Ryou’s presence would be vibrant and difficult to hide. If Ryou wasn’t here, and nobody would say what had happened to him…

He hadn’t died, but it was highly likely he would soon.

He could just wait it out if he wanted. Another hour or so probably, and then this would all be over for both of them. Maybe if he just relaxed and went to sleep now, he could even be here waiting when Ryou finally passed. They could both catch a break, at least for a little while.

But that was a selfish choice. And Curtis knew it, because something else had come up in his meandering thoughts since the morphine had kicked in and he’d been able to think a little more clearly. A piece of information that had been shared with him in passing, unimportant to everyone else in the current emergency. Perhaps another person wouldn’t even have thought of it, but Curtis was a man who always processed all available intel before making a decision.

There was another option. It was an expensive option though, and his family would pay the price for it. There would be no body for them to bury, no grave for them to visit for closure. They would have so many questions and never any answers. To them he was just a military translator, with the highlight of his otherwise boring career being the few months he had spent as Communications Officer aboard the Atlas. Him disappearing on his deathbed, choosing to go die somewhere that his body would never be recovered, would always be a mystery to them.

But it might give Ryou a chance. A slim chance, given that Curtis’ understanding of how he actually functioned was minimal, but a slim chance was still a chance.

It was almost ironic that the final decision Curtis would ever make would be the most agonizing one of his life. He was so desperately tired, nobody would ever blame him for finally just giving up, and Ryou was a grown man and not Curtis’ responsibility. There was nothing evil or wrong about tapping out now and waiting for the other man to join him when his chosen path reached its predicted conclusion.

And yet.

“I’m going to go get some coffee,” Roxanne murmured, and Curtis heard her chair slide a bit along the floor. “Want some?”

“Yes, please,” Estelle said softly. “I’ll go with you down the hall to the lobby, I want to find out if their communications are up yet. I really do need to call Mom and Dad.”

He opened his eyes halfway, watching them quietly leave, and after a moment he was left alone with nothing but his thoughts and the quiet beeping of his monitors.

As if the universe was telling him that now was the time to choose.

Curtis stared up at the ceiling, listening to the beeping. He closed his eyes and relaxed, thinking about how easy it would be to just fall asleep now while he was alone.

He opened his eyes again and sat up, annoyed at how deceptively easy it was. His body still had strength, even if it was only a little, last reserves that would burn out quickly if he tried to do anything extensive. But it wasn’t like he was taking a jog and he didn’t have far to go, so it would suffice.

His first move was to adjust the settings on his monitor, setting it to replay the last twenty minutes saved in its record so it continued to quietly beep as he pulled the sensors off and set them on the nearby tray table. He removed his IV needle carefully, and got shakily to his feet.

No, he definitely wouldn’t be running any races. But he could manage.

Curtis walked slowly, making his way to the door. He peeked out and found this area of the hall still quiet, if a bit blood-stained and dented. The bodies Ryou had beaten unconscious had been moved, by doctors most likely since he’d made sure to break quite a few of their bones, leaving the path clear as he made his way back to the same comm screen where he’d called the Paladins earlier.

He didn’t stop there this time. He leaned heavily against the wall and retraced his steps, annoyed with how chilly the halls were in the medical gown he was wearing. He had considered grabbing his clothes from where the nurses had folded them up on a chair, but he hadn’t wanted to waste any time.

There was nobody here as he went through these back hallways, taking the elevator that went down to the morgue. From there he only had to go up one floor, and shuffle through a hall in the officers’ wing to get to the airfield. Nobody was in the offices right now, it was all hands on deck throughout the rest of the base.

The winter wind was bitingly cold as he stepped outside, shivering violently throughout the short walk to one of the back doors of the Atlas hangar. There were hallways that would have taken him there but they would be filled with people, this was the fastest way.

He let himself in and crossed the catwalk over the great ship’s empty berth below, to the high-speed lift that took him down to the floor. Nobody was here either, with the Atlas and her crew gone there was nothing of use in this hangar. Not a soul around to stop him as he went over to the huge locker room, slowly making his way down the rows. He made it to his own and opened it up, pulling out the brand-new away crew flight suit that was still in its package.

It took some effort to get it on, and by the time he was finished he knew his absence must have been found out over in the med bay. They would be looking for him, and if he didn’t move quickly enough they would find him.

Curtis shoved the medical gown into the locker and closed it. Leaning heavily against the row of lockers, he left the room and limped to the lift down to the high security labs. The power was out here though, which meant he had to fight his way carefully down the stairs.

There was some backup power here, but it was only enough to keep security running. Doors, scan pads, and basic computer functions would be available, but anything that that took more power than that would be out. The hallways were lit with red emergency lights, wreaking havoc with his already tired eyes.

He made it to Allura’s containment lab and had to stop for a moment to catch his breath before he let himself in. Here, too, the power was out, everything flooded in red. The familiar hum of background machinery was gone, the containment cylinders left unsecured.

It didn’t appear to matter. As Curtis got close he could see that the smaller entities, the ones Ryou called Formless, lay in the bottoms in smoking puddles of evaporating goo. The Gold appeared to have taken care of them when the fields had failed.

The Gold itself lay listlessly in the bottom of its own container. It still shone in the red light, but the usual kaleidoscope of ripples was gone as it rested down in the base. Curtis opened the dead tube, lightly tapping the metal near the Gold and making it twitch slightly.

“You too?” He asked tiredly. He didn’t know what had happened, but the Gold looked as if it had worn itself out terribly. “It hasn’t been a good day for any of us, has it?”

Curtis hesitated, then gently scooped the creature up in his hands. From the way it was laying he had expected it to feel almost slimy, maybe soft and squishy like the jellyfish its movements sometimes resembled. But it barely felt like anything at all, more like he was just holding a cold spot of slightly heavier air. A ball of plasma or something, with no discernible weight or mass.

“I don’t know where Ryou is,” Curtis admitted. “And I don’t know if you know what’s going on either. But I think you have a better chance of finding him than I do, and obviously you need to get out of here too.”

The weird shape moved slightly, as if it was waking up groggily from sleep and just now noticing he was there.

“I know you can control a body, you did it to Lance on Colony One. And I know you can access someone’s memories, because you knew what needed to be done with the Zero crystal. Well, there’s a shuttle upstairs. You can access it with my handprint and eye scan. I also have coordinates for where you need to go. I just got them a few days ago, so I know they’re still right. You and Ryou need a source of quintessence to recharge, right? Well, there might still be time to get to one. And I’m dying, so you don’t have to worry about me making a return trip.”

Curtis left the room, walking more slowly this time. He’d spent what he had getting here, now he just hoped he’d done enough.

“I need you to get him there, no matter what,” he implored. “Even if he does die, I don’t want it to be here. I don’t want him to be stuck here on Earth until he might be born again. He said he has kids, I’m assuming he means on the other side. So maybe…even if he can never cross all the way over again, your kind can obviously come here. If you can get him close enough, at least he can see his family again in the end.”

He wasn’t certain if his point was getting across; without Ryou here the communication barriers were high. But the Gold finally moved, sliding up Curtis’ arm and gliding slowly across the surface of the flight suit. He sat still, waiting. until he felt the cold sensation run across the back of his neck.

There was a faint pressure that quickly released, and then Curtis felt himself finally drop into the waiting arms of sleep.

[ [ / T W ] ]

* * * * * * * * * *

“Sir? Bogh and his ground team are here.”

Allura winced as Lotor’s distraction caused him to press harder than necessary on the burn he was cleaning, startling him further by pulling away.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, turning back to her from Acxa. His mind was all over the place, and he was nowhere near recovered from the events of the last few hours.

He had told her just before they’d confronted those druids that something bad had happened, that time had been reversed, but they hadn’t yet had a chance to sit down and have him share the details. They hadn’t had a chance for anything, in the aftermath of the fight they were all running around like blaksveigs without kurlentauffers.

Lotor needed some time in private, some quiet to calm and center himself. But he wasn’t getting it yet, and he was quickly fraying further.

“I’ll see him right now,” Lotor sighed, grabbing the small glass vial he’d put one of the newly harvested Zero crystals in and trying to smooth down his hair. “It’s very warm in here, someone should check that.”

Allura grabbed a piece of gauze and smeared some salve on her burn, throwing the gauze over the whole thing and scurrying after him.

“Wait for me, will you?” She demanded.

Lotor stopped short just outside the door, looking back at her as if he’d never seen her before. His eyes were slightly unfocused for a moment, then all at once he seemed to come back into the present.

“Sorry,” he said again, raking a hand tiredly through his hair. “I’m sorry, I’m just…”

“Completely fried,” Allura answered, falling into step beside him as Acxa came to join them. “Are you sure it’s wise to meet with allies when you’re like this? Surely Bogh will understand if you need half a varga first. He seemed to me to be a reasonable man.”

“The Imperial armada came to our aid when the far easier thing to do would have been sit back and wait for a new kral zera,” Lotor murmured. “They fought bravely for a cause they chose on their own to fight for, and it’s my duty to acknowledge what they’ve done for me. Regardless of how tired I may be. Besides, the more quickly this is done, the more quickly we can move on to other things that need doing.”

By “other things” she knew he meant getting the Atlas and the cruiser back to Earth. The Atlas medical crew was trained to deal with an infectious disease, but the sheer scale of the patients meant they needed to get these colonists back to Earth. They needed to be on a planet that had larger medical wards, more medicine, and more trained staff and caregivers if they wanted to give the sick their best chances of survival.

They turned a corner and Lotor slowed down slightly, taking her hand to pull her back. He let Acxa get ahead of them, and looked down at her somberly.

“You need to take Shiro back to Earth,” he said quietly. “Now. The medical staff here is overwhelmed, and from the last SOS transmission we received, their shields were down. Take the rest of those crystals and Sincline, and prepare them for our arrival so hospitals can be ready.”

“Are you sure?” Allura asked, frowning. “I don’t want to leave you here alone like this.”

“Coran can temporarily Captain the Atlas,” Lotor assured her. “He has the little Paladin’s parents there, and Griffin’s people. He’s already out there loading that mech of Shiro’s into the Lion hangars, I can send somebody to let him know. I’ll have a quick meeting with Bogh now then arrange for a more formal one in a few days…the situation with the colonists is bad, we’ll be following you shortly.”

Allura stopped completely, turning him to face her. She reached up and pushed some of his hair out of his face, both his hair and his skin still splotched with soot and cuts and burns. The druids on Honerva’s ship had not been easy to beat, but he had shown great skill and advancement and she was proud of him.

“I know you have to take care of everyone else, but please don’t forget to take care of yourself,” she requested. “Promise me you’ll keep this meeting short. No deciding to send everyone else ahead while you and an envoy stay back and exhaust yourselves with meetings.”

He looked surprised, as if the idea hadn’t even occurred to him. But she already knew it would at some point, and wanted to head it off at the pass.

“Promise,” she insisted.

After a moment he smiled and nodded, leaning down to kiss her softly.

“I promise,” he agreed. “I’ll be packing everyone up and personally bringing them to Earth in less than a varga.”

“Then yes, I will go ahead with Shiro and the crystals,” Allura allowed. “Hail us if you need anything, understand?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Then I’ll take my leave, Your Imperial Highness.”

Neither of them could have looked any less like royalty at the moment. Battered and bruised, their clothing ripped, torn and burnt, and their hair…oh, their hair. There was no saving it this time, simple washings and trims were not going to hide the huge chunks of missing locks and coils that had been lost today to well-aimed attacks. They were both in for extensive haircuts when everything was calm, and for the moment looked as if they’d tried to style themselves with a blender.

Normally elegant and poised, Lotor probably could have walked through a small army of regular Galra grunts right now and nobody would have picked him out of a line up. And the horror of that was that although Allura had not yet gotten a good look at herself in a mirror, his appearance was a dire portent of how she looked.

But she was still up and moving and on her feet, which was more than could be said for some others.

They reached a fork in the hallway and Allura gave his hand a little squeeze before letting him go, heading for a different lift. This one took her down to the same docking bay where Lotor was going but to a different part, allowing her to leave the ship without being noticed and hopefully not insult Bogh with the fact that she was slipping away. The last thing they wanted to do right now was insult their rescuers, here on the eve of the possible re-establishment of a peace plan.

Allura made a stop at Lotor’s small personal shuttle, where the majority of the crystals they’d collected from the grass patch below had been stowed. She dug around for a box and piled them inside, making sure the container was securely closed and the bright shine of the crystals was hidden as she let herself back out and carefully disembarked.

The shields were down now, it wasn’t necessary to have them, and a few of the healthy Alteans were making last minute runs to check the colony for anything that needed to be taken. For now all Alteans were being moved to the safety of Coalition space, but if Lotor could solidify a security blockade here then eventually they would be returning.

They were not ready to give up on this planet yet. And now, with these crystals, perhaps they didn’t have to.

Allura had to admit, she was insanely curious as to how these crystals had come about. She knew the physics that had created the initial Infinite Zero, that was a simple concept of the intense pressure of a wormhole’s infinite mass compressing the matter of the Castle of Lions so quickly it essentially punctured a hole in spacetime at its center that turned it into a tiny, portable rift gate. But what had occurred to make a few hundred more without destroying the whole planet, she didn’t know.

Romelle and Veronica were with Coran, watching as he gave commands to the Atlas soldiers who were maneuvering Shiro’s strange new mech onto the ship. The smaller one, the one she had begun to call the White Lion, was already seated in one of the Lion hangars as if waiting expectantly to leave. Allura came to stand with them, watching it all with unease.

Both of these mechs were alive, she could feel it. They were the same as the Lions in a way, but also very different. Inexplicably, the life force she felt coming from both of them felt like…well, like _Shiro_. As if he were somehow extending himself out larger than he had once been and bleeding into these two ships.

Which, on one hand, would be very difficult even if he were capable of it since he was unconscious. On the other hand, it was also possible that whatever animated these two new additions to their arsenal was only still active _because_ Shiro was unconscious and hadn’t yet suspended it.

The long and short of all of it was that Lotor was going to have a field day researching these things, and there was no time for her to muse on it now because they had to get back.

“How is Griffin?” Allura asked the two other women as the crane arms disappeared into the hangar with the mech in tow. “Is he all right?”

She didn’t know James Griffin terribly well, but she knew that Veronica had a history with him as a fellow soldier, and that Romelle had grown closer to him since the outpost. Neither looked terribly happy.

“He got banged up pretty bad,” Veronica said, turning away from the Atlas. “One of the medics said there are signs of oxygen deprivation, and there’s some nerve damage from a deep laceration to the spine. No word yet on how bad that is.”

“They brought him back to the med bay after his scans,” Romelle added. “As soon as they got a painkiller into him he passed out asleep. I think we’ll have a better idea of how he is after he gets a full night’s rest. How’s Shiro?”

“We’re not sure,” Allura admitted. “Lotor said the Komar mechs can initially be charged with quintessence, but that they continue to run by using their pilots as a battery. Shiro had some crystals with him, I’m certain he fueled both the mech and the new Lion ship using those, but we can’t rule out that something went wrong and he was drained instead. Or it could be something wrong entirely separate from the mech.”

Lotor seemed to have an idea that might point in the direction of answers, but they hadn’t been able to find a quiet moment to talk long enough. He was concerned about Shiro’s condition, but not as much as the rest of them. They would need to have a very long discussion, and soon, if Allura was going to have any real idea of what had transpired here today.

She knew it was big. She could still feel the dying waves of the disturbance in the quintessence field, the last rough tides after a giant storm. But there were waves still coming from another direction as well, hinting that something massive had occurred elsewhere in the universe recently as well. Allura had never felt anything like it, but she didn’t know if that was because nothing like it had ever happened before or because this was the first time she was trained to notice.

“We’re going ahead to Earth,” Allura announced as the hangar doors began to close. “We need to make sure it’s still standing, and then warn them they’re about to have an influx of thousands of patients. We’ll also be taking Shiro…the Garrison will be where he’s most likely to receive any specialized care he might need.”

“You mean Adam will murder us all if we don’t get him back right away, especially in his condition right now,” Romelle amended for her.

“Yes, that too,” Allura supposed. “At any rate, let’s get ready to go. Veronica, can you let the med bay know we need Shiro transferred over to Opal immediately? And Romelle, get someone to the Lorelia or Atlas bridge, we’ll need a wormhole.”

They both darted off to do as asked, and Allura quietly took the case of crystals through the docking bay and up the lift to the Lion hangar, where the three Sincline ships were currently berthed. She tucked the case away in her cockpit and then wandered over to stand at the base of the two new machines in their possession.

Their size was imposing. The new, sixth Lion was in the middle ground between Black’s height and Blue’s, but sleek and built for speed and maneuverability like Red and Green. There were traces of the other colors…a strip of yellow on the chest plate, blue on a tail sensor, black on the inner ears, red on the nose, a triangle of green on the forehead. There did not seem to be any specialty weapons except a jawblade—she hadn’t seen any kind of cannons or lasers deployed during the fight—but chunks of black and purple metal still stuck in the razor-sharp claws were proof of its melee capabilities.

The mech was the same height as the Komari it had been created from, but more in line with humanoid proportions. It knelt where it had been placed, the chest cavity airlock from where Allura and Lotor had pried it to get to Shiro when he’d stopped responding. The original pilot capsule had been destroyed when he’d taken control—or, rather, when the White Lion had taken control—but a new one had been alchemically created just like the Atlas had once been transformed.

Allura ran her fingers along the outer hull of the mech’s leg. It was cool and hard, as metal would be, in spite of the deceptively soft-looking texture. Lights flashed briefly, visible in the open cockpit as the mech’s scanners read her contact, but everything went dark again when she stepped back.

Her father had once told her that he’d felt as if the Lions had built themselves using him as their hands. Apparently they were now far too deep in this confusing war for such subtlety as hiding behind mortal builders.

The door at the far end opened and Veronica appeared with two medical technicians and a gurney. Shiro lay unconscious, his removed armor being carried by Veronica as they wheeled him across the room to where Opal was waiting.

“All of his life signs are steady,” one of the technicians told her when he started to remove the monitor sensors. “He’s clear for short-term transport, but try to avoid any rough handling.”

“Our trip shouldn’t be more than a few doboshes,” Allura assured him. “If all goes well, we’ll be handing him off to Garrison medical personnel very quickly.”

The techs secured the gurney in Opal’s small storage hold as Romelle returned, and within a few minutes all three ships were taxiing across the hangar toward an open airlock. Clearance came through from the Lorelia as they launched, and just a couple ticks later a wormhole flashed into existence up above the atmosphere.

“Be ready,” Allura warned as all three ships accelerated. “Earth came under attack when we did, and they haven’t returned our hailings since. It’s perfectly possible that their long-range communications are simply off line, but we need to be prepared for the worst.”

That was undoubtedly another reason why Lotor had wanted her to go ahead. Somebody had to make sure there was still an Earth to return to, and the Sincline ships were their best vessels for that at the moment.

Opal’s screen dimmed as the ship passed through the open wormhole, automatically adjusting the light to tolerable levels. Two heartbeats later and darkness once again descended as they came out on the other side, faced with the looming sight of the far side of Earth’s moon.

The wormhole closed and they killed their engines, letting the ships drift silently around the satellite to hopefully remain unseen by any potential attackers.

Earth slowly came into view below, quiet and apparently peaceful. A scan showed that her shields were back online, albeit still only at partial power. That was probably due to being shut down, it would take a few hours for them to reboot to full strength.

“Hailing the New Mexico Galaxy Garrison base,” Allura tentatively activated her comms. “This is the Sincline ship Opal, hailing the Atlas base and the Lions. Does anyone copy?”

There was a long moment of silence and she began to fear the worst, then her comm line flickered to life.

“Allura! It’s Keith!” The familiar voice drew a huge sigh of relief. “Sorry, I had to run to an available communications port. The Lions are down and so are their comm lines. Where’s everyone else? What happened with the colony? Is everybody okay?”

“Everybody is…fine,” Allura said awkwardly, keenly aware of the unconscious man in Opal’s hold. “A lot has happened, the other ships will be returning shortly. But first things first, what’s the status of Earth? Are you capable of receiving a large number of ill patients? We have at least two thousand, and more than need quarantine.”

“That doesn’t sound like everybody’s fine,” Lance’s voice joined Keith’s. “I’ll get some people together to meet you on the landing field for the details, but I have to tell them something. What are we looking at?”

“A measles outbreak,” Allura replied. Ahead of them, the shields flickered open to allow the three ships to pass, and they set a course for New Mexico. “A slightly mutated version of it, but Earth’s current vaccine has been effective so we’re hoping that current treatments will be as well. We have a large number of infected who are showing symptoms or gravely ill, and then a large number of exposed who aren’t yet showing symptoms.”

“Got it,” she didn’t need to see Lance’s nod to be able to envision his mannerisms. “I’ll have some officers out there to meet you!”

“I also need some med techs,” Allura requested. “We have an unconscious patient who needs an immediate transfer in my hold.”

“Who?”

Keith’s question didn’t hold any excess worry, but she knew that was only because he didn’t know the details. And she hated to be the one to deliver them.

“…Shiro,” she winced.

“Wait, what’s—”

“He seems to be okay!” Allura cut him off as she heard the panic start to rise in his voice. “His life signs are normal, he’s just not conscious. It’s a very long story, are you at the base? We’re headed in for a landing.”

“All right,” Keith grudgingly allowed. “We’ll see you in a few.”

Allura closed the line as they dropped down below the cloud cover, sucking in a breath as the base came into view. She heard both Romelle and Veronica give exclamations as they saw the same thing she did, the stretch of destruction spanning across the desert and halfway across the base airfield. The base itself was intact, its particle barrier down and a flood of soldiers escorting civilians back outside.

As she got lower she could see military vehicles throughout the city, with soldiers and staff moving down the streets. It looked like they were verifying the safety of any damaged structures.

The airfield was a mess, the Sincline ships had to come in for a truncated landing far closer to the buildings than they normally would. As they came in for the final approach they passed Green, Black, and Yellow seated near a crater, and spotted Pidge and Hunk out by the ships, surveying the damage. Blue and Red were seated closer to the base, with Keith and Lance nearby as Opal came to a stop and his engines died down. They had some higher-ranking officers whose faces Allura recognized with them, but Adam was nowhere to be seen.

_Oh, please let him not be dead_, Allura thought hollowly. So many of them had come so close today, Colony Two had barely scraped through without her losing anyone and the odds were not high of two attacks resulting in no personal casualties.

Two medical technicians arrived as she disembarked, and she stepped back as they unsecured Shiro’s gurney and removed him from the ship. Lance and Keith darted over immediately.

“What happened?” Keith asked anxiously. “He’s a mess. _You’re a mess_. What…?”

“Have you looked in a mirror?” Allura asked flatly.

Both Paladins were covered in bruises and abrasions, their armor dented and scuffed and scraped. Their undersuits were torn in places, the open cloth showing hastily-applied bandages that had been shoved under the fabric until more thorough medical attention could be gotten.

“Laurentia’s communication was unsecured, he painted a target on the Atlas,” Allura decided to tell them what they wanted to know and put them out of their misery. “Several factions showed up to get rid of Lotor, then Honerva stopped by to make sure the job got done. Luckily for us, the Imperial armada came to their Emperor’s rescue. Hold on a tick.”

She was careful about the details, not wanting anyone but the Paladins to be privy to any information about Shiro. Even the Atlas crew wouldn’t really have the full details, most of them hadn’t had access to scanners or viewscreens during the fight since the ship had been on a safety lockdown. Allura turned her attention to the officers that were waiting, noting the medical insignias on their jackets.

“I’m sure Lance mentioned, the Atlas and the Altean cruiser will be returning shortly,” she told them. “The full populations of both ships have been exposed to a slightly mutated measles outbreak. Anyone healthy will remain quarantined on the ships, but we also have a new batch of colonists who are very ill. Are we equipped to handle that?”

“We were prepared for the arrival of up to five-thousand potential patients,” one of the officers, a woman, said. “But we were going on the assumption that the main ailments would be starvation and potential long-term radiation exposure, given the information Lotor provided.”

“I think we can make some changes,” the man with her frowned. “They were going to be treated at the stadium about five miles north, Admiral Iverson had it converted into an emergency field hospital. The town around it is still mostly uninhabited, I think the outbreak can be contained there. I have to make some calls to get some specialized gear and more medical staff…it will take me a few hours to mobilize that.”

“But it can be mobilized?” Allura asked hopefully. “The attack here, will the damage interfere?”

“The attack was pretty localized,” the woman answered. “We haven’t gotten reports of any damage past the desert in any direction, except some power outages due to the final explosion.”

Allura looked at Keith and Lance questioningly. Keith stepped forward.

“Go ahead and call in whoever needs to be called in,” he requested. “The Lions should be fully functional again soon, any supplies or staff that need to be moved can be done by us once you gather everything here. In the meantime, alert the field hospital that their patients will be here soon.”

The officers both nodded and excused themselves, running off to prepare. Keith finally let the technicians start wheeling Shiro inside, and Allura followed the two Paladins in with him. Romelle and Veronica came to join them, and as they stepped inside the warm building and out of the winter chill Allura finally braved the question she was avoiding.

“Where’s Adam?” She wondered. “Three mechs, according to the SOS we got…”

“He’s okay,” Lance said quickly. “Mostly everyone is okay. He’s getting a gunshot stitched up, he wouldn’t sit still for it until he was sure the rest of us were patched up.”

“Mostly everyone,” Veronica picked up on the same word Allura had. “Who’s not?”

Lance and Keith looked at each other, and Keith deflated slightly.

“Curtis isn’t,” he admitted. “Kuro’s not. It’s really complicated…what happened to Shiro?”

“It’s also complicated,” Allura frowned, running a hand absently through her hair. “He…did something. Well, the White Lion did something, using him. He somehow took control of one of Honerva’s Komar mechs, and changed it the same way he did with the Atlas. But doing it must have taken a lot out of him, by the time the fight was over we had to pull him out of it and he was unconscious. I know he looks as much a mess as we do, but his vitals are all fine and he doesn’t seem to be excessively injured.”

Keith and Lance looked at each other. Allura felt a pang of annoyance as they seemed to communicate through expressions alone.

“What?” Romelle prodded. “What do those looks mean?”

“Do you have the video?” Keith asked Lance. “My armor’s tablet function is fried.”

“Yeah, give me a sec,” Lance sighed, pulling up his own. The screen flashed up after a moment, hovering above his arm as he accessed something. He held it up and let it play for them to see.

It was deja vu as she watched the Komar mech physically changing shape to suit a non-druid pilot. She, Romelle and Veronica slowed their walk as they watched, and Keith and Lance had to guide them along in the wake of Shiro’s gurney as they did. By the time the strange, silvery shield spread across the garrison and the mechs disappeared from the video, they were already in a room.

“Thanks,” Keith said to the techs as they left. “Can one of you do me a favor and bring Dr. Wolfe in? He’s down the hall in room 17B getting some stitches. You might have to strap him in the wheelchair, he’s in denial about the broken leg.”

When they were gone, Allura turned her attention back to the video they’d been shown.

“What happened after that?” She asked. “After they disappeared, I mean. Have any of the mechs been found?”

“Oh, we found them all right,” Lance snorted. “And I hope you have time, because this briefing is gonna take a while.”

“The flash of light was the creation of…a pocket of spacetime,” Keith said, though Allura got the feeling he was oversimplifying for the moment just to tell the story. “Kuro made it. We managed to get into it, and two of the enemy mechs were taken out. The third made it back here in one piece but was eventually destroyed, but unfortunately not before the pilot managed to set off the self-destruct.”

“Oh no,” Veronica breathed, voicing the sentiment all three women felt. Allura remembered that self-destruct and its consequences all too well.

“Yeah,” Lance murmured. “Only instead of us up in the sky, this time it was Kuro.”

“I will punt you through the fucking wall if you don’t let go of me right now,” Adam’s angry voice came from the hall then, echoing from where he had just stormed out of a room a short distance down. “Test me, see if today’s the day I lose all fear of prison.”

“If you could just—” a man tried.

“It’s not _broken_,” Adam insisted shrilly. “I’ve been my own field medic for the last year and a half, I know broken!”

He appeared in the doorway a couple ticks later, and Allura had to bite her tongue. He was in as bad of shape as Keith and Lance, with an addition of a pronounced limp thanks to an obviously amateur splint on one leg.

She didn’t have to ask why everyone was still so badly injured; logic would dictate that at some point power had been lost. The handful of healing pods that were now used at this base would be some of the last things to come back online and would be reserved for people hurt far worse than the Paladins were at the moment.

“He’s okay!” Romelle beat Allura to exclaiming as they all saw Adam catch sight of Shiro and go pale. “As…as far as we can tell.”

“As far as you can _tell_?” Adam asked incredulously, making his way to Shiro’s bedside. “What happened? Is he hurt?”

“He did the same thing Kuro did,” Keith broke in with a shortened version of the long explanation. “Took over one of Honerva’s mechs and piloted it.”

“He was like that when we got him out,” Allura repeated. “No serious injuries on any of the scans we took, strong pulse, good breathing. We don’t know what’s wrong.”

Adam leaned heavily against the side of Shiro’s bed. He sighed tiredly and pulled off the glasses he was wearing, rubbing his eyes and setting them aside. Lance helpfully lowered the room’s lights so he wasn’t blinded, and Adam looked down at Shiro for a long moment.

Allura expected something…romantic, maybe. A gentle stroke of the cheek, maybe a light kiss. Instead, Adam remained completely still and then finally placed both hands over Shiro’s mouth and nose.

“Stop!” Keith and Lance exclaimed as one.

“What are you doing?” Allura asked incredulously, her words lost amongst Romelle’s and Veronica’s equally ardent protests.

Adam ignored them, and Keith moved to stop him. Before he could reach the bed, Shiro made a choking snort noise and reached up to smack at the hands on his face and Adam let him go, sliding a hand under Shiro’s head to lifted it a bit as he started coughing.

“He’s fine,” Adam said over Shiro’s hacking as it died down. “You didn’t get anything on scans because there’s nothing to scan, he was just asleep. It’s happened before, one time in college he stayed awake for five straight days and when he finally passed out in the common room our RA thought he was dead.”

“What the hell,” Shiro croaked, wincing and rubbing his face.

Now Adam finally softened, pulling the nearby chair closer so he could sit down on the edge of it. Shiro looked around blearily, managing a small smile when he recognized Adam, but before he could say anything else his eyes drifted closed and he went still again.

“It may be exhaustion,” Allura suggested, moving a little bit closer. She rested a hand on Shiro’s leg and reached out, searching for any signs of something blatantly wrong that she could perhaps try to heal. But there was nothing different now from when she’d attempted right after removing him from the mech. “None of us thought to try _suffocation_ during tests!”

“That’s because you haven’t shared a bed with him long term,” Adam replied. “After the first thirty days, the urge to suffocate him when his eyes are closed gets pretty common.”

The edge of sarcasm she had quickly grown used to was absent, replaced instead by an audible tiredness, and the way Adam held Shiro’s head was very gentle. She had to remind herself that she simply didn’t know him as well as she knew the others yet, and that his history with Shiro went back farther than any of them. He wouldn’t have done anything to knowingly harm him, even if to them the move had seemed…unorthodox.

“If it is exhaustion, he’s going to be out until he recovers,” Veronica piped up. “In the meantime, we really need to debrief each other on what went down today. More attacks could be on their way, we need to put our heads together.”

“You guys go ahead,” Adam glanced up at them as Keith and Lanced moved away from the bed to head toward the door. “I’ll stay here, you can fill me in later.”

Allura glanced toward Keith to make sure that was an option before she said anything. He was the acting leader of the Paladins at the moment, even if it seemed to make him uncomfortable. Keith nodded.

“Let me know when he wakes up,” he requested. “I’d like to be here when you tell him.”

“Sure.”

They piled quietly out of the room, and Lance closed the door behind him. Allura had a heavy feeling in her gut at the looks on their faces.

“Tell him what?” She asked, that hollow feeling returning to her gut. “Is it about Kuro? You said he wasn’t okay.”

“Let’s go back outside,” Keith suggested, ushering them back down the hall. “Lance will call Hunk and Pidge back, I’ll get us some rovers. There’s something you need to see out in the desert.”

\-----------------------------

_*TW summary – Curtis has been moved to a private room in the medical bay with his sisters at his side. Roxanne and Estelle are discussing (amongst themselves) trying to contact their parents since they know Curtis doesn’t have much time left, but a lot of communications are still out. Curtis is mostly ignoring them and accepting the fact that he’s said his goodbyes (Sarah, Gail and Raina have stopped in, Adam has been brought by, and some of the other Paladins have come in. He does NOT want his parents called, because he doesn’t want them to see him this way)._

_After a nurse gives him a painkiller so he can rest, he tries to do so and considers the fact that Kuro hasn’t come by. He deduces that Kuro never made it back from the fight, and is out there somewhere near death as well._

_His sisters leave the room to go get coffee and try calling their parents again, and Curtis decides to use the last of his time to help Kuro if he can. He sneaks out of the medical bay and to the empty Atlas hangar, where he changes into a flight suit and goes down to Allura’s containment lab. He releases the Gold and offers to let it use him as a temporary host, telling it that he thinks he knows where the two Reapers can go to save themselves. He makes it known that he’s volunteering because he knows it will be a one-way trip, and that he doesn’t expect to make it back himself anyway._

_The last thing Curtis is aware of is the Gold accepting his offer and taking over._


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took much longer than I intended to get out, my apologies. I live in one of the big cities that was hit with a LOT of looting and fires in the first weekend of the protests, and while I always logically knew that I was safe (there was no violence against individuals here, and the looting damage was all commercial, not residential) being literally just a few blocks from the craziness happening can still set a person back a bit mentally. I'm almost 38 years old, I've lived through a lot of "historical moments," but 2020 has been BATSHIT INSANE, and I feel like it's trying to take some of us with it. If any of you have been out there in the protests, please know that I support you 100%, and be safe!
> 
> And a quick question for some of you (don't feel compelled to answer, it's fine if nobody does): do you think it's weird for authors to reply to your comments? I started writing in the age of Livejournal, when full conversations, debates, and philosophical discussions about the source material would occur in the comments on a post. I get comments and I often have the urge to reply, but I don't want to make it weird. Comment discussions kind of died off when so much social media removed nested comments, I don't want to bug people if responding to comments isn't a thing anymore.

Adam listened to the quiet voices receding down the hall, waiting until they cut off as the speakers stepped into the elevator. He hauled himself up from the chair and limped to the door, closing it and ambling carefully back to Takashi’s side. 

It wasn’t a random guess that he was just asleep, or some secret medical knowledge nobody else would have, it was simply an intimate familiarity with what Takashi looked like when he was resting. 

In the dark, with most visual functionality shut down for the night, Takashi read as a map of warm spots. His body temperature spiked in certain places when he slept, the same places every single night, and a simple thermal reading told him more about his husband’s physical state than any other scans they did would. 

The usual temperature hotspots were there now…his legs, his shoulders, his neck. All nice and normal, just like at night, and those readings coupled with the news that all of his vitals were also normal had led him to his conclusion. 

But there was also something very wrong, something he hadn’t wanted to address with an audience. Something he suspected most scans, which would have been checking Takashi’s temperature by reading his skin surface of his forehead, wouldn’t have picked up. 

Back at the winter dance, when Adam had switched over to his thermal imaging to hunt down the idiots he’d been chasing, he had spotted what had turned out to be Curtis and Kuro running down a hallway. Curtis had been easily picked out by his height, and Kuro’s presence with him had been guessed at first then confirmed later. At the time, Adam had thought his implants might need adjusting, because Kuro’s core temperature had read as being below zero. Which was absolutely impossible for a human being. 

Despite a perfectly normal, warm surface temperature, Takashi’s core was now reading the same way. Black and frozen against the warm reds and yellows of the rest of his body, which simply wasn’t possible. 

But Adam no longer believed that what he was reading was actually a body temperature. After what had happened earlier today, he was painfully aware of the limits of his human senses, even his electronically augmented one. Knowing now that Kuro wasn’t fully human, that he was part something from the quintessence field, Adam had to assume that what he was reading wasn’t a patch of cold. It was far more likely that it was some kind of overpowered core, perhaps with such a high quintessence concentration that it messed with his readings. 

The question now was whether the man laying on the gurney in front of him was actually Takashi Shirogane, or if it was one of Honerva’s druids wearing his skin. Or, a third possibility, if it was some other entity. Adam just didn’t know enough about these things to be sure, and he didn’t want the question to come out while anyone else was around. 

The one assurance he did have was that he felt Blue nearby, and while he got the sense that she was a bit perturbed, she wasn’t freaking out or giving him warnings. She was certainly more familiar with all of this than he was, so if there was a serious problem she would know. 

Adam pushed the chair as closed to the bed as he could get it and settled back in, resting his head on one arm on the mattress. He closed his eyes and tried to let his body get some badly needed rest, making sure he still remained awake and alert. Once anybody else on base who needed the healing pods more was done, he and the other Paladins would take their turns, but for now he was tired and sore. 

A nurse came in only a moment or two after he’d settled in, apologizing quietly as she hooked Takashi onto some basic monitors. Adam was intimately familiar with them all thanks to Takashi’s extensive stays in the hospital when they were younger, but he politely let her explain what she was doing. 

Her hands were trembling slightly as she forged on through her job, clearly shaken by everything that had happened today. He let her talk, figuring it gave her something to focus on, and within a few minutes she was finished and gone and the room was quiet again. 

Adam put his head back down and lay in the silence for what he would guess was about forty minutes, until he heard the faint sound of fingernails being drawn lightly across the mattress. He opened his eyes to find one of Takashi’s hands lightly clenching, then felt his body stiffen in a slow, tired stretch. 

Taking an educated guess at how long it would have taken for a battle to be declared over, the winning side to gather, and casualties to be collected, Adam estimated that Takashi had probably been asleep for about two hours now, possibly three. That definitely wasn’t enough time for a grown man of his size to be fully rested, but the very deep nap appeared to be enough for restlessness to begin to interfere. 

And Takashi was very restless. About five minutes after Adam stretched and sat up, Takashi started awake, letting out a string of nonsensical noises that were probably the continuation of something he’d been trying to say in a dream. He tried to sit up but he was still too tired for that, and settled for running his hands jerkily across his chest and pulling off the sheet he found there in confusion. 

“Your armor is over in the corner,” Adam said, keeping his voice down for the moment. 

Takashi managed to roll over on his side, pushing himself up a bit to lean on one arm. He looked around the room blearily, his hair sticking up and his eyes still heavy with sleep, his brain trying to catch up and figure out how the four walls he saw now were related to the cockpit he’d been looking at before he’d passed out. His gaze made it to Adam and stayed there for a moment, then he rubbed his face with his free hand. 

His eyes were disturbingly pale, not at all the silvery gray Adam was used to. Adam had thought he’d seen that when he’d first forced Takashi awake but he hadn’t been sure, now he had confirmation. 

“This…we’re at the Garrison?” Takashi guessed, his voice rough. “Where’s everyone else?” 

“If the intercom in the hallway can be trusted, the Atlas arrived about half an hour ago and was diverted to the stadium up north,” Adam replied. “Allura, Veronica, and Romelle came ahead with you almost an hour ago.” 

Takashi let out a tired groan and let himself fall over, landing face-first in his pillow. 

“I thought I dreamed it,” he mumbled, muffled. 

“No, ‘fraid not,” Adam assured him, finally raising a hand to lightly run his fingernails along the patch of short hair at the top of Takashi’s neck. “None of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things that went down anywhere today were dreams.” 

It was hard to tell since Takashi wasn’t fully alert, but Adam got the impression that he wasn’t quite the same. He was right-handed, but when touching his chest and rubbing his face he had defaulted to his left one. His voice was also tinged with the Japanese accent he’d had traces of back in school but had long since naturally lost, like he’d somehow been reset. 

Adam carefully hooked the back of his undersuit collar and pulled it down with the hand at Takashi’s neck. It wasn’t as gentle as he would have liked to be, but he wanted to take advantage of the other man’s weakness now instead of asking for permission later. He did his best not to choke him as he pulled it down until he saw the last, healing traces of what had been an angry red scratch. 

He knew that particular scratch because he’d caused it, along with a few others that had resulted from making the most of the night before they’d gone their separate ways. If he leaned forward he could see a few more of them, which was good enough for him at the moment. 

“Well, you’re you,” Adam supposed, letting go of the fabric as Takashi made a choking noise and lifted his head to shoot him a glare. “Not another clone being snuck in under our radar.” 

_He’s him_, Blue confirmed. Adam could feel that this made her concerned. _He’s also someone else now._

Adam wasn’t certain what that meant, but it had been such a weird goddamn day he couldn’t find the energy to be terribly fazed. His greatest concern was Takashi’s health and well-being, and with him sitting here in front of him obviously alive and seemingly well, anything else was almost minor. 

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Adam asked, taking Blue’s cue anyway. 

“Uuuuuuuh,” Takashi said into the pillow. Adam could picture his wince even though he couldn’t see it. “Want to tell you? Not really.” 

_He doesn’t want to, but he should anyway_, Blue commented. 

“Yes, I picked up on that,” Adam assured her. “Evasive isn’t his strong suit.” 

“Whose strong suit?” Takashi asked, raising his head. 

“Yours,” Adam clarified. “And I’ve had a stupidly long few days, can we skip the part where you try to avoid actually telling me what’s going on because you know I’ll get mad?” 

“That depends,” Takashi let himself sink back down, this time with his head turned so that the pillow scrunched up his face but didn’t block it. “Will you promise not to be mad first?” 

“Do you promise what you tell me isn’t worth me getting mad over?” 

“No.” 

“Then also no.” 

_He’s stalling_, Blue warned. 

“I know,” Adam agreed. “He’s hoping somebody will show up with some important briefing and save him.” 

“Hold on,” Takashi grumbled, lifting his head again. This time he also raised a hand in a ‘stop’ motion. “Are you two tag-teaming me right now?” 

“No, the tag-teaming part is when Blue takes over to stop me from hanging you out the window by your ankles because you’re too exhausted to fight me off,” Adam warned. “Right now she’s just playing lie detector, because I have a feeling she already knows what you’re trying to hide.” 

“Yeah, I should’ve known she’d be first in line to rip me a new one,” Takashi murmured tiredly. “Red will be next, after you’ve been sicced on me.” 

He didn’t even bat an eye at the idea that one of their Lion-shaped war ships was actively taking part in the conversation. When Keith had said that Takashi took control of an Altean mech the same way Kuro had, Adam thought he was just loosely throwing words around. But with what little he had seen and heard already, he was beginning to see that had been literal. 

“Can you just be honest with me?” Adam blurted out, giving up on trying to form a sarcastic response. He didn’t want an argument right now, even a good natured one. “I can see you, _all_ of you. Or at least, a lot more of you than most people can. You look like Kuro right now, and Allura said you took over one of those mechs to pilot just like he did here today. You understand there’s only one road I can go down with that, right? The one where you’re carrying one of these ghost monster things? So please just rip the band aid off for me and tell me what happened. I’m not one of the kids.” 

“Okay,” Takashi said softly, dropping the candor. 

He tried to get up again, and this time Adam helped him turn and kick his legs over the side of the bed. He gave up on the chair and moved to sit next to Takashi instead, resting a hand on his back in case he wasn’t able to stay up. But Takashi was recovering, it was just happening slowly. 

“I guess the easiest way to phrase it is that I sold my soul to save a planet full of people,” Takashi admitted. “The White Lion that Allura’s always referencing, it’s been hanging around me for a while. In the Infinite Zero, or the crystal on my arm. Now it’s just…me. I look like Ryou because I gave in and let myself be made like Ryou, it was the only option I had to stop everyone from dying. I bonded two into one and here I am.” 

Adam didn’t like the sound of that. Kuro seemed to be okay, he had always been active and healthy, but he was literally the only one Adam had come across who was like that. Every other one of these things he’d seen except the Lions had been a parasite draining their hosts dry, and if he was being honest Adam had no real experience with this White Lion. Takashi talked about it sometimes, in the night when he couldn’t sleep, but he had always referenced it as something that existed within the Atlas. 

Granted, Adam hadn’t been awake for very long. A few weeks now, barely, and Takashi probably would have come clean with far more detail if given the time. But that didn’t make the idea of potentially watching him waste away again any less terrifying. 

“So what happens now?” Adam asked, trying not to sound as upset as he felt. “Are you…you? Or are you this White Lion? Or are there two of you living in your head?” 

“I’m me,” Takashi answered uncertainly, as if not entirely sure. “I feel like me, anyway. But when I say “me” I mean two different ones. Like, I’m Takashi, Captain of the Atlas, but I’m also White, waiting for my sister to get wind of this and show up pissed. I mean, I warned all of the other Guardians this was probably going to have to happen, but I don’t think they were ready for it to happen…now.” 

The other Guardians. That was what Blue had referred to herself and the other Lions as, Guardians. 

Adam was always a dozen steps ahead of everyone around him, a trait he had recently found out came from the Nixa’s hunter side of the family tree. But being a dozen steps ahead was no good if he didn’t understand what those steps meant or what came after. 

Takashi had been carrying this White Guardian around, and White clearly knew Blue and Red. It knew Black, Green and Yellow as well, most likely. Each of those had a Lion ship to exist in, but with no White Lion ship this sixth Guardian had been hanging out in the Atlas or in the crystal on Takashi’s prosthetic. The Lions seemed to be bound to the Paladins since long before this lifetime, and somehow this one had become bound to Takashi. 

From the video feed back during their fight, Adam also recalled Kuro’s visceral reaction to coming face to face with the druids over the comms. He’d spoken in a language the Lions hadn’t easily been able to translate into English, and had received a fluent response. The Guardians called him a Reaper, which meant there were at least three entities currently on play in the board. 

All three, Guardians, Reapers, and these “Formless” things, originated in the quintessence field and were made of energy. All three could control physical bodies, but if Takashi and Kuro were an example then only the former two did so in a symbiotic way rather than a parasitic one. 

Guardians, good. Reapers, good. Formless, bad. Hotel, Trivago. Adam had no idea what to do with any of these deductions, or where their tiny human lives fit in. _Giant Magical Energy Cat Becomes Captain of Earth Warship_ ran through his head, ticker-tape style, like a breaking news story. 

“So are you, like…a supernatural furry now?” Adam asked gingerly. 

Takashi opened his mouth but immediately closed it. He took a breath and opened it again, his brow furrowing. He briefly looked like he was in pain, then twisted a little to face Adam. 

“Remember that talk we had?” Takashi asked. “About how you have to say the first half of the thought out loud too, or the second half you blurt out makes no sense?” 

“No,” Adam answered confidently. “You probably had that talk in my direction, but I stop listening when your tone stops being flattering.” 

“Well, we’re having that talk now.” 

“We saw the Guardians that animate the Lions. They have human shapes, but their native one is a giant lion thing,” Adam reversed course to give his statement the requested context. “They change back and forth, apparently. You’re not going to turn into a giant cat on a full moon or anything, are you?” 

“Of course I’m n…” Takashi’s scoffing attitude faded along with the words as he looked unsure. He appeared caught off guard by the question. 

“You don’t know, do you?” Adam asked. 

“It would be kind of ridiculous if I did,” Takashi answered, not looking any more certain. “It…it probably wouldn’t be _unheard_ of, obviously there are things all over the universe who change according to their environment, but…” 

He trailed off again, his eyes narrowing slightly as he stared off into nothing, that face he got when he was wracking his brain for an answer he’d forgotten. It must have occurred to him that they had never actually seen Kuro on Earth during a full moon, and that he was rather close to those wolves. 

Adam wanted to say Curtis would have told them if his roommate was a werewolf, but given some of his friend’s lesser spoken kinks he really couldn’t be sure. 

“I don’t…think…anything will happen,” Takashi said finally. “Though I’m realizing now that I don’t know anywhere near as much as I thought I did, and I probably should have thought about this a little bit more.” 

“You better hope nothing will happen,” Adam warned. “There are a lot of full moons in space.” 

“It might not be all moons, they might have to be a certain size and shape and distance.” 

Adam didn’t reply to the hypothetical, and Takashi fell silent. They had hit the ceiling of human endurance and were exchanging meaningless words simply because conversation was an inborn habit. Adam had been through too much today, the idea that something horrible might befall Takashi thanks to this deal with an otherworldly entity was pushing him almost to the point of short-circuiting; what he wanted to do was scream, no more casual words that might continue to block that urge were forthcoming. 

After a few minutes of silence, both of them staring off into the distance as the last few hours’ stresses really began to set, Takashi ran a hand through his soot-stained hair and let out a heavy sigh. He twisted around and put his head on Adam’s shoulder, wrapping his arms around his middle and hugging him tightly. 

Adam immediately hugged him back, resting his head against Takashi’s and tangling the fingers of one hand in his hair. When a faint shudder went through Takashi’s body Adam held him tighter, clamping his jaw tightly shut to swallow back down the threatening tears. 

It was…a lot. The captivity, the torture, the war, the endless parade of ever greater threats. They were barely thirty, in a time before the Galra most people their age would be settling down and starting families, not tamping down the recurring trauma of repeated near death experiences. Even now, _most_ people their age who had survived were rebuilding their lives and repairing the world, the thousands of Atlas crew who had joined the Coalition were only a small fraction of Earth’s remaining population. 

There were weddings, pregnancies, births, young children’s firsts. The planet was still in shambles but people were out there, living their lives, blissfully unaware of the real horror of what was going on even though they basically knew it was bad. Meanwhile, a relatively small handful of people just kept on giving, buying everyone else just a little more time with their own blood and sanity. 

He didn’t want to resent anybody. He was trying not to. He had enlisted as a soldier because he’d always known that the stronger needed to protect the weaker, and he hadn’t walked away from all this because he still understood that fact. But he still couldn’t help being a tiny bit bitter. 

Adam tilted his head slightly, lightly kissing Takashi’s hair just above his ear. Even with everything he’d been through, if there was any way he could have taken away this new burden and shouldered it himself he would do it in a heartbeat. Because he knew Takashi far too well, enough to know that all of his time out in space had been spent looking out for everyone else and completely ignoring his own needs. And the idiot would continue carrying all the weight if nobody forced him to let them help, the fact that he would trade himself for everyone else’s survival was proof positive of that. 

“_We’ll do it all,_” Adam sang softly, barely above a whisper, letting the hand in Takashi’s hair drop down to lightly rub his back. “_Everything…on our own. We don’t need anything…or anyone.”_

Takashi shifted, lifting his head to look up. There was a little more color in his eyes now, like the strange white color was gradually receding to allow the return of warm gray. Takashi was beautiful, with scars or without, no matter what color his hair was or if he was missing some pieces. Just having a chance to sit here, to look him in the eyes and hold onto him, to know he was alive and okay, had a soothing effect. 

“_If I lay here_,” Adam smiled a little, leaning in to press their noses together, which made Takashi finally break into a tired little smile. “_If I just lay here…_” 

“_Would you lie with me, and just forget the world?_” Takashi sang quietly in return, finishing the refrain. 

Adam kissed him gently, running a thumb along his cheek, feeling the faint irregularities of the scar he was beginning to adjust to. Takashi returned the gesture almost shyly, like he was somehow new to this even though he obviously knew what he was doing, but rather than be disturbed Adam chose to find it somewhat cute and endearing. Had this supposedly great and powerful otherworldly entity that had taken up residence in his husband never been kissed? 

First Adam had been tasked with breaking in a new clone body that had technically never been intimate, now Takashi was carrying around an interdimensional grade schooler. 

As Adam pulled away he placed one more light kiss on Takashi’s nose, on the scar there. This day had been long enough, it needed to be over soon. 

Takashi reached down to put a hand on Adam’s leg, running his thumb over the makeshift splint that he wouldn’t let any of the doctor’s take off. A cool sensation ran across his skin, followed by a strange feeling that he could only describe as a sort of tightening. As it faded so did the ache, and Adam experimentally flexed his leg to find the injury gone. 

“That’s…handy.” 

“It’s one of the very few perks, I guess,” Takashi supposed. “So I guess it’s not all bad. It’s definitely bad. Really, really bad. Just not…all bad.” 

He was looking at his hand as if it wasn’t his own anymore, turning it over. Adam sighed and took it, lifting it to lightly kiss the gloved fingers. 

“We’ll deal with this,” Adam promised. “I’ll help the others finish wrapping things up here, we’ll go home, you’ll get some rest, and then we’ll deal with it.” 

They’d also have to deal with the fallout when Takashi finally found out about Curtis and Kuro, which Adam didn’t want to share yet. Keith had wanted to be here, and Adam hoped Takashi would get a chance at a little more rest before that set him off again. 

“I don’t want you to have to deal with it,” Takashi said guiltily. “It’s like I just can’t stop throwing bad things at you until I finally ruin your li—“ 

He cut off as Adam put two fingers over his mouth. 

“You’re greatly underestimating how much I hate everyone else in the world if you think you’re the one ruining my life,” he said dryly. “Just stop. We used to be a team before things got rocky, we need to be a team again. We’ll figure out what we’re going to do and then come back tomorrow with a united front. If the teenagers sense weakness, we’re done for.” 

Takashi gave in and laughed softly, letting his head fall back down to Adam’s shoulder again. Adam stretched out to pour a cup of water from the small pitcher the nurse had brought in, dipping the edge of the sheet into it and starting to wipe away some of the dirt and blood on the other man’s face. The irony of his own appearance probably being just as bad didn’t escape him. 

There was a low, whining alarm sound that echoed unexpectedly from the hallway, the lights in the room switching over to the red emergency ones. 

“Oh, COME ON!” Adam exclaimed, letting himself fall back on the bed and cover his face with both hands. 

Takashi’s groaned “fuuuuuuuuuuck” was drowned out by a woman’s voice coming over the intercom. 

“_Unauthorized access to planetary shields. Prepare for possible evacuation alert. All staff stand by for further instructions._” 

Adam sat back up and tore off the splint, leaping off the bed. He braced for pain but felt none when he landed, whirling to point at Takashi, who had begun to rise as well. 

“You stay here,” he ordered. “You finished your mission, let me finish mine.” 

He sprinted out of the room, thinking better of it and skidding to a stop a few doors down. Scrambling back, he threw the door back open just in time to catch Takashi creeping over to grab his armor from the corner. 

“_Stay!_” Adam snarled. “I mean it!” 

Takashi dropped the breastplate and threw both hands up in surrender, backing away from the armor. Adam slammed the door closed and grabbed a passing nurse. 

“Commander Shirogane stays in this room,” he ordered. “Get someone here to make sure of that, and tell them not to let him pull rank.” 

The nurse nodded and Adam took off, bounding down the hallway in the direction of the elevators. He threw himself against the closed doors, mashing the button repeatedly until they opened and he fell inside, then stretched up to slam the ground floor button from where he lay on the floor. As he scrabbled back to his feet, he tried unsuccessfully to reach the others. 

_Comms still down?_ He asked Blue, beginning to hit the button for the ground floor repeatedly even though the elevator was already on its way down. _What’s going on?_

_Communication lines are back up, but everyone’s armor needs a recharge,_ Blue answered. _No phone calls until you’re in the cockpit. As for what’s going on, trying to figure that out now._ _Nobody seems to know. There aren’t any ships approaching, and the access is happening internally._

_Okay, but who’s accessing it?_

_Green’s working on that._

The doors opened on the ground floor and Adam leapt out, flying past confused and startled medical personnel who were still reeling from the earlier attack. He hit the cold outdoors running, jumping up into Blue’s open mouth as she flew past. He bolted for the cockpit and threw himself into the pilot’s seat, booting up the internal comm lines. 

“Anybody got a read on who’s accessing the shield?” He called out. “Katie?” 

“I just finished tracing the line back to our own communications room,” Katie answered, her visual flashing onto his screen to show she was already in Green. “Somebody’s using Kuro’s computer.” 

“I thought we turned that off!” Adam groaned, setting Blue’s destination for the desert where the others currently were. “How did anybody get in there? We locked it down, the only people who can get in there are out here cleaning up this—” 

“The access panel was overridden ten minutes ago,” Katie announced as she found what she was looking for. “Using the same hidden hardware that was set up to take down Admiral Miller.” 

“I wasn’t here when that happened,” Adam frowned. 

“None of us were involved,” Keith appeared in Green’s cockpit, leaning over so he could be seen. “The only people with the access codes to that are Coran, Iverson, and Shiro. And Curtis.” 

One of those people was not here. One was in surgery after the beating he’d taken earlier, and the other had been with Adam when the alarm had gone off. He called in to the front desk of the med bay. 

“This is Dr. Shirogane paging. Does anyone down there have eyes on Commander Duchesne?” 

“No, sir,” a man’s voice returned after a moment. “He was in his room with his sisters, but went MIA when they left to get coffee and make a phone call.” 

“Thank you.” 

Adam closed the line and sat back in his seat as he approached where the others were gathered, marked by Green sitting up in the middle of nowhere where she had initially been used to bring everyone out. 

He had no idea what was going on here, and he didn’t like it. 

* * * * * * * * * * 

Lance shielded his face from the light rain of dust as Blue touched down. She lowered her head and Adam appeared, walking far better than he had been earlier and without that horrible, amateur splint. Pidge and Keith came bounding back down out of Green, and the group gathered at the edge of the circle made from “Caution” tape. 

“Curtis is missing,” Adam announced, absently running a hand through his hair. “I think at this point the most logical assumption is that he’s accessing the shields.” 

“At least we know he’s not taking them down,” Lance noted, looking up at the sky. “But he should be in bed, so why is he messing with them at all? Who let him get up and walk around in his condition?” 

The shield system wasn’t always visible, but if one looked carefully there was usually a spot where sunlight hit in just the right way to give an iridescent sparkle to a patch of sky. Lance could see that patch over toward the west, 

“Nobody let him, he’s missing,” Adam answered. 

“And he’s using Kuro’s computer instead of his own access codes so he doesn’t leave any evidence,” Pidge added. “We only know it’s him by process of deduction, nobody outside this small group would ever be able to trace it to him.” 

“Maybe he’s using the satellite cameras,” Hunk suggested, looking uncomfortable. “Kuro’s not there, Curtis has to know something’s wrong. And it’s not like we gave him any information.” 

Lance felt a faint pang of guilt that he knew was echoed in the others. Curtis’ condition was rapidly deteriorating, and none of them had wanted to be responsible for making it worse. As horrible as it might have been, they’d all just sort of hoped Curtis would go peacefully without noticing who had or hadn’t been by to see him. 

“If he’s using the cameras, then we can probably expect a call,” Keith supposed dully. “He might want to come out here.” 

“He’s not in any condition to travel out here,” Adam replied. “Not in this cold.” 

“We’re about to try and see if we can fix it,” Allura told Adam as they all turned back to the destruction in front of them. “With luck, maybe he won’t have to come out here.” 

That was going to require a lot of luck, Lance knew. 

Beyond where they were standing was a no man’s land, a twenty-yard-diameter circle of space where no one could go. Footprints from those who had previously tried showed the extent of the danger, whole chunks of ground that upon first glance appeared solid and steady turning out to be made of little more than dust that caved in under a person’s weight. 

At the center of the circle was the source: a large Kuro’s mech, half-embedded in the middle of the small crater it had caused. His bet on the pilot capsule being made strong enough to withstand a self-destruct detonation had paid off, that was how Ariella had survived to be found months later after all, but there was another problem at play that nobody had foreseen. 

Kuro’s pilot capsule was open, and he had gotten partially out of the restraints before he’d passed out. He was visible, right there for anybody to see, but nobody could get to him. 

From what Red and Yellow were saying, the mech was still trying to draw power from Kuro. But he was at his breaking point and didn’t have anything else to give, it was basically sucking the life out of him. In turn, his natural instinct was to draw the quintessence out of the area around him to survive, essentially creating a bubble nobody could step into unless they wanted to very quickly become dead. 

The land around him was unstable, drained of its quintessence and turning into nothing but barely-stable matter, but on some level he was still trying to rein it in. If he wasn’t, Black estimated that several cities would have been nothing but dead piles of ash by now. 

So Kuro wasn’t conscious or strong enough to get himself free, and none of them could get close enough to get him. Hoshi, who was currently prowling around the area whimpering, had tried several times to get close before they could stop her. She didn’t have any physical injuries. but the squealing yelps she let out before having to immediately back out of range made it clear that she wasn’t immune either. 

“What are you going to do?” Adam asked, coming to stand by Allura. “Is that the crystal we stole back from Honerva?” 

“No, that one is still in the hands of the Atlas crew,” Allura replied, holding up the shining crystal she’d retrieved from Opal. “This is another one. We have a good handful of them now, and with enough of them to study we may even be able to figure out how to produce more. I’m hoping it will fix this.” 

“Allura’s thinking that these crystals are basically tiny quintessence wells,” Hunk told him. “If he’s trying to suck up power, maybe we can toss him enough to at least get him out of that thing.” 

“Stand back,” Allura warned, planting her feet. “I can aim just fine, but I can’t promise I won’t punch somebody mid-throw.” 

Lance backed up, accidentally stepping on Keith’s foot and almost falling over. Keith grabbed him, pulling him back a few more feet away from the very dangerous—and slowly expanding—edge of the dead space. 

“This thing keeps growing,” Lance pointed out. “Look, that spot right there, where Pidge’s footprint is? It wasn’t black like that a little while ago. Do you think Earth is in danger?” 

“I think he’s keeping it in check as long as he’s alive,” Keith answered bluntly. “He’ll be dead before it gets much farther.” 

Lance glanced back at him, wishing there was something he could say or do that would make this situation better. Keith had spent a lifetime watching people who he’d gotten attached to either leave or lose their lives for others…his mother, his father, Shiro, Antok, now Kuro. And with how hard the fighting was getting, Lance knew in his gut that it wasn’t over yet. They’d been lucky so far, but eventually their luck would run out and they would start dropping too. 

“Come on, have a little faith,” Lance tried, knowing the encouragement was hollow. “It’s not over ‘til it’s over.” 

Allura took aim and threw the crystal, nearly missing her target. It was by sheer luck that it hit a torn shred of metal and deflected downward, landing just inside the pilot capsule at Kuro’s feet. Lance held his breath, not sure what would happen, and winced when a sudden bright light flashed in his unprepared eyes. 

It was gone as fast as it came, leaving him blinking wildly and rubbing his eyes to get rid of the spots. 

“…no good,” Pidge said after a minute, tapping something on her tablet scanner readout. “It’s_ working_, it’s just not working. The purity of the quintessence the crystal is giving off is generating massive amounts of power…if you’re a warship. Not quite the same bang for your buck if you’re a star-consuming, otherworld entity running on empty.” 

“He drained it that fast?” Allura asked, bewildered. 

“It’s still functioning, but the crystal basically acts like a pinhole in a dam,” Pidge answered. “Compared to what’s on the other side it’s just a trickle. If you’re a small animal looking for a drink it’s more than adequate, but for a human dying of thirst it’s not quite as helpful.” 

“What if we added more crystals?” Hunk asked. “Allura said there were some more. Enough trickles add up to a river, right?” 

“Sure,” Pidge said uncertainly. “If you have a massive number of trickles.” 

“We don’t have a massive number of crystals,” Romelle frowned. “There are a good number, but not enough to make a river.” 

Lance felt a soft vibration at his wrist and looked down as his viewscreen popped up, Red’s quiet warning that something was amiss. He looked at the readings with a frown. 

“There’s a ship in the air,” he told the others, enlarging the screen. “It looks like it launched from the ground, but it looks Galra.” 

“Insurgents?” Keith asked. “I know there’s still at least one group to the west we haven’t been able to completely catch. 

“No, that’s Garrison-made,” Adam answered. He lifted Lance’s wrist a little, getting a better look at the screen. “It’s an MFE prototype I worked on, before Sanda decided on Altean design.” 

“Does it have attack capabilities?” Keith asked. 

“No, they were never added. It’s good for long-range travel with a small exploratory team, that’s about it.” 

“It’s also headed for here,” Hunk pointed out. 

They watched the blip on the radar approach, nobody really certain of what to do. Lance had a pretty good idea of who was flying it, and he knew that if he had figured it out everyone else definitely had as well. Anything that wasn’t currently in use from the Atlas Project would be stowed away with very few people having access, and all but one of those people was currently offloading Altean patients at the stadium field hospital. 

A few minutes later a shuttle touched down, a sleek mix of human and Galra technology that looked like it was built for war. It landed silently, kicking up very little dust, and in short order the airlock opened. 

Curtis stepped out, wearing one of the newly designed flight suits and sunglasses, adjusting one of his gloves. He was moving a bit easier now as he dropped down to the ground, as if a decent nap had done him some favors. 

“You should be in bed,” Adam accused. 

“You shouldn’t have been lying to me while I was in bed,” Curtis returned easily, walking past him to the edge of the caution tape without looking at any of them. “But here we are.” 

Hoshi stopped slinking back and forth and came over, her ears down and her low tail wagging slightly. She nudged Curtis’ hip, letting out a whine, and he reached down to scratch her behind the ear. 

“You’re trying to use a Nocturline crystal,” Curtis noted the now-weak glow coming from the base of the pilot capsule. “Good theory, unfortunately it wouldn’t have worked at this point even if that machine wasn’t still running. But thank you for trying. I really do appreciate it, and I’m sure he would as well.” 

Before anyone could stop him, he lifted the caution tape and walked toward the fallen mech. Some of the others let out gasps, and Lance heard Keith and Hunk both yell “stop” the same time he did. Adam tried to make a grab for him, but didn’t reach him before he was past the point of no return and had to pull back, holding his hand against his chest as if burned. 

Little threads of golden light shot through the ground beneath Curtis’ feet, weaving themselves in a crisscross pattern to stabilize the deteriorating ground where he walked. They hit the the mech and climbed the side of it like rapidly growing vines, seeking out the pilot capsule and snaking their way around Kuro’s body. Like a net, they wrapped themselves around him as Curtis reached him and climbed up onto the wreckage. 

“What…the hell,” Adam breathed. 

“That’s not Curtis,” Keith guessed. 

“You don’t say?” Lance asked sarcastically, the stress of the day finally starting to get to him. “What tipped you off?” 

Keith irritably elbowed him aside and tried to follow. He got to the caution tape and ducked under it, and nothing appeared to hurt him now that Kuro was somehow under wraps, but as soon as he hit a weak spot in the dirt the ground collapsed under him. Lance and Hunk both lunged forward to grab him, barely stopping him from disappearing under the surface. 

Now heavily disturbed, the ground began collapsing outward away from where Keith had fallen. As if made from billions of tiny dominos, the earth rapidly fell away in both directions, circling around the mech piece until all of the quintessence-drained ground had sunk down into a big pile of ash. What remained looked almost like a sinkhole, a good four yards deep at least. 

Curtis glanced down, but merely shook his head before going back to releasing Kuro’s restraints. He let out a whistle and Hoshi appeared beside him, dancing anxiously on the wreckage until he guided her closer to lay Kuro across her back. He nodded his head toward the shuttle and she disappeared, obediently delivering her cargo out of sight to the small ship. 

Curtis walked back the way he’d come, the strands under his feet once again weaving themselves in front of him as he moved across the now-open air, to find Allura and Adam blocking his way. Adam summoned his bayard, and the glow jumping angrily along Allura’s fingers said she was still hyped up from her earlier encounter and more than ready for a right. 

“Who are you?” She demanded. “What do you think you’re doing with our friends?” 

Curtis sighed and took off the sunglasses now that he no longer needed them for the element of surprise, his usual bright blue eyes now entirely black. Lance had a sudden flashback to Colony One, to having his body move of its own accord when he was too exhausted to fight it. 

“It’s that thing from down in your containment lab,” Keith grunted as Hunk hauled him back to his feet on solid ground. “Black called it a Gold. I _thought_ it was on our side.” 

“I helped you keep your planet in one piece, to my own detriment, I’d guess nobody who wasn’t on your side would have bothered,” Curtis said dryly. “Unfortunately, I have something slightly more important to attend to than you right now, and you have plenty of Quintessi running around here already. Your Majesty, Doctor, please step aside…both I and this body are too weak to fight you right now, but that does not make me a pushover.” 

“We’re not going to just let you run off with Kuro and Curtis,” Adam said sharply. “I guess we can’t just keep you locked up down in a lab from here on out but you can’t just leave, either.” 

“The man you’re toting around like a puppet is very sick,” Allura said angrily. “You can’t just pop in and out of people as you please! He needs to return to the medical bay, and if you’re truly here to be helpful then let us take Kuro back and treat him while you’re containing him.” 

“You can’t treat her,” Curtis said irritably. “The only thing on this side of the rift that would keep her going is if she gave in and sucked this solar system dry. And even then, she would still be floating around barely conscious until she found a few more stars to drain. You have no idea how much bigger we are than these little tiny bodies of yours, or what it takes to keep us going. Existence is so much more massive than you can ever wrap your head around, this miniscule corner of it that your universe takes up is nothing. And that goes for me as well…I’m exhausted and I need to recharge, immediately. This is your last chance to step aside and let me do what I have to do.” 

Lance tensed, uncertain of what was going to happen. Next to him, Hunk and Keith both drew their bayards in preparation for a fight. But Lance wasn’t about to let either one of them get killed by engaging something they knew was ridiculously dangerous, and neither was Pidge. They both threw up their arms to block the other two Paladins’ weapons, and hopefully head off any accidental war incitements. 

Romelle and Veronica were standing back, armed only with blasters and obviously aware drawing them would be useless. But Allura and Adam were not backing down. 

Curtis sighed again, his shoulders slumping. He rubbed his temple as if he had a headache. 

“Fine,” he said in response to the glare if the two soldiers blocking him. “Have it your way.” 

He gave a flick of his fingers, and for a moment nothing happened. Then Lance felt his wrist vibrate again, calling his attention to his viewscreen. The others looked at theirs as well, as everyone’s alarms began going off at once. 

“The zaiforge cannon is armed!” Pidge exclaimed. “It’s shifting its position toward Earth!” 

“What the hell are you doing?” Lance demanded, whipping around to look at Curtis. “Do you have any idea what that thing will do to this planet?” 

“Given that it’s a much smaller version of what I know you faced during the war, not as much damage as a full-sized one,” Curtis answered. “But at this range, still probably enough to vaporize at least one continent. Do you want to pick which one?” 

“Can you override it?” Keith asked Pidge, his tone indicating that was more of a command than a question. 

“I’m trying!” She snapped. “It’s not accepting any input at all!” 

“The internal computer is shut down,” Curtis replied. “You can control something mechanical without a computer when you can control electricity…which you can’t do, so you’re going to have a pretty tough time stopping it from a distance. Excuse me.” 

He whistled and Hoshi appeared at his side. A second later and they were both gone with a pop, and then the shuttle’s airlock slid closed. Just before it shut completely, Curtis briefly reappeared.

“And I didn’t just “pop in here as I please,” _ma’am_, I was invited!” He called defensively, slamming the door closed the last few inches. Lance got the feeling he was probably also muttering something unflattering under his breath as he left them behind.

“Goddamn it,” Adam hissed, spinning around to watch the shuttle start to lift off. He looked like he was going to try to go after it, but whirled back to them in favor of the more pressing matter at hand. “Can that thing up there really vaporize a continent?” 

“There were initially five that combined to make a full-power cannon,” Hunk answered worriedly. “We took out four, and only that one was repaired to keep as defense. Five would be a planet killer, but just one? Even if it doesn’t vaporize a continent, it’s definitely gonna leave at least half of it a crater.” 

“Get to the Lions,” Keith commanded. “I don’t know if they’re repaired enough to form Voltron, but all five of them should be able to take out that cannon. Hopefully before it does any damage. Allura! Sincline would be a huge help right now!” 

“On it,” Allura ran after him as Black arrived, dropping down to collect Keith and the three girls. The ground shook as Red and Yellow slammed down nearby as well, and everyone scattered to their respective ships. 

“Zaiforge cannon,” Lance muttered, sprinting up into Red and throwing himself into her cockpit. “If it’s not a Galra legion it’s an alien mech, and if it’s not an alien mech it’s a zaiforge cannon. At what point do we get a vacation from all this that doesn’t involve at least one of us in a cryopod or a quarantine cell?” 

“When this war is over,” Keith answered tiredly over the comm. “Just one more reason to end this, no beach holiday until we do.” 

“Yeah, well, if these attacks keep up there won’t be any beaches left anywhere in the galaxy,” Lance complained. 

Red sped alongside Black, with Blue falling in beside her as they closed the distance between the crash site and the base. Lance and Adam pulled their ships to a halt as Black descended, rising to join Yellow and Green in the air. Below, Allura, Romelle, and Veronica leapt from Black’s airlock and sprinted to their ships. 

As Black launched back into the air, the five Lions began to rapidly rise toward the zaiforge cannon above, which all warning signs said was in the process of aiming at and locking onto the city. 

“What’s our move with this thing?” Adam asked. “How do we stop it?” 

“The Lions aren’t in any condition to form Voltron yet,” Pidge answered. “We’re going to have to take drastic measures.” 

“We know the Lions can take a blast from these smaller cannons,” Keith replied. “We’re lucky that there’s only one. Adam, I need you on my left. Hunk, on my right. move in close, I want us locked shoulder to shoulder. We’ll push from the bottom, and block any shots in the process. Allura, we need Sincline to try and swing it around away from Earth. Knock it out of orbit if you have to. Pidge, Lance, help Allura in case the girls need more than two hands.” 

“On it,” Lance chirped, taking off and flipping over Yellow to follow Jade and Carnelian as they shot past to join Opal. 

He felt…optimistic. That was really the only word he had for it, a distinct lack of fear that anything would happen to the city below. Lance didn’t know why he felt that way, but he was completely confident that they would fix this and nobody would be hurt. 

Perhaps he just had a healthy disbelief that this Gold entity would risk the lives of so many. He obviously wanted to help Kuro, Lance just couldn’t believe that anyone who knew the older man would dare try to honor him by causing people physical harm. 

But in addition to that optimism, it also bothered him. A single zaiforge cannon, while an imminent threat to anybody below who was unprotected, was hardly a match for five functioning Lions and three fully active Sincline ships. Even for a distraction it wasn’t great, that shuttle Curtis had taken was Galra in design and would require jump points to get very far. He was only buying himself a few minutes at the most. 

Red shot out of the atmosphere beside Opal, joined a few seconds later by Green. The cannon shuddered ever so slightly as the two Lions arced down to slam into it, digging their claws in to get a better grip. Behind them, the three ships combined into the Sincline mech, throwing its weight in with them. Lance felt a shudder go through Red’s hull as Black, Blue, and Yellow banded together into a shield and rammed into the cannon from below, and on command he threw on his thrusters.

The cannon moved slowly, but easily. There was some resistance as its targeting program turned on its own thrusters to try and lock back onto the ground, but overall it was outnumbered and outweighed and pointing it away from Earth was easy.

Too easy. Lance had gotten this feeling before, when something wasn’t quite right. Maybe he didn’t always know what the problem was, or have the analytical skill to jump a few steps ahead, but he knew when his gut was giving him a warning loud and clear.

“Are we clear?” Keith asked.

“Not yet,” Pidge warned. “A little farther, otherwise we risk wrecking a ton of satellites. Just a couple more seconds.”

Lance heard it when the cannon suddenly stopped powering up. There had been a low whine underneath everything else that was audible, but besides that the cannon drew quintessence from its balmera crystal to fire. That was something he could feel, a faint tingle as it danced across the surface of Red’s protective coating.

“What happened?” Hunk asked in the following quiet. “What’s it doing?”

“I don’t know,” Pidge replied. “It just stopped charging. The readout says it was disarmed.”

Lance quickly flipped on his scanner, picking up the signal the cannon was sending out to its remote controlling station down on Earth. Words flew across the screen as it downloaded the last minute or so of data, ending with a confusing line.

_Attack mode disabled. Shutdown code accepted: Commander Curtis Duchesne_

The cannon had been shut down, despite the shuttle still being within view and nowhere near escape distance. The shuttle didn’t appear to be moving very quickly either, as if it wanted to remain close for some reason.

_You can control something mechanical without a computer when you can control electricity._

Like Kuro had done. Like this Gold clearly could do.

Like he was still within range to do.

“Let go!” Lance warned, throwing Red’s thrusters up to full power.

He had a choice, the Green Lion or the Sincline, and in the single instant he had Lance picked Sincline. If something else was going to go down here, that mech was necessary to defend the planet below.

As it turned out, he needn’t have worried. Pidge responded immediately, Green darting away to his left as he threw Sincline to the right. All three were just barely out of range as the power surge hit, sending a wave of sparks across the surface of the cannon. They arced over the three larger Lions, bigger and slower to move and still in contact with the surface. Lance let out a curse as the feeds from Black, Blue, and Yellow dropped out, all three floating powerless in the atmosphere.

That was why they’d been lured to the cannon, instead of just taking a shock from the satellite net like Kuro had done. This power was fueled by a crystal, and therefore directly by quintessence. That appeared to play havoc with the Lions.

A notification flared up, perfectly normal, warning all space craft in the area that a wormhole was opening as the teludav down on the planet’s surface was activated. It flashed into existence right in front of where the shuttle waited, answering the question of exactly how the Gold intended to escape.

“Pidge?” Lance called.

“I’ve got them!” Pidge called back, Green dancing over the cannon to start grabbing the larger Lions by the tails and pull them away from being caught in the planet’s gravitation and falling.

“Here!” Allura exclaimed as Sincline’s top airlock opened and she leaned out. She lobbed something small and sparkly in Green’s direction then disappeared, and the mech took off after the shuttle.

“I’m going with the girls!” Lance announced, setting Red off after her. “Lock in on me and come join us when the others are up and running!”

There was no time to wait for a response. Although large and bright, the fact was that space was empty and large, and the actual distance between them and the wormhole was pretty great. Sincline shot through by the skin of its teeth, and the smaller Red Lion only just barely followed behind.

“Nope!” Lance commanded, gritting his teeth and gripping the controls tightly as Red began to veer away from Sincline, the natural pull of the wormhole tunnel attempting to funnel its contents toward the edges. “No, no, no. Stay close!”

_I’m trying! Let’s see you fight the flow of a spacetime compression after you’ve just taken a beating!_

It wasn’t really a voice in the normal sense of the word, but the tone made it clear that Red was not in the best of moods.

“Sorry,” Lance whispered guiltily.

Everything rocked as Sincline suddenly grabbed Red’s tail. Lance let out an unintentional screech as his ship was flipped around, followed by the nauseating shuddering as both of them collided with the wormhole wall. Lance had been through this before; he hadn’t liked it then, and he didn’t like it now.

Everything was noise and light and shaking, he felt like he was in a blender. Then, as abruptly as it started everything went silent, and he found himself floating in the peaceful silence of space.

“What did you do that for!?” Lance demanded.

“Watch your tone, Brat Face,” Veronica warned. “Mom’s not here to protect you.”

“The shuttle dropped out through the wormhole wall,” Romelle interjected. “We grabbed you as soon as we saw. He must have suspected at least one of us would manage to follow him and wanted to dump us far away.”

“Damn,” Lance muttered, righting Red so that he and Sincline were at eye level. “How far away is he?”

“Not far,” Allura replied. “We acted fast. He’s only bought himself a few thousand miles at the most. At our speed, we can still catch him.”

She sent him over the coordinates and they sped in the direction of the ship’s ID signal, rapidly closing the distance. Barely a few minutes later they arced around the single solar system that was in their way, the receding star’s light giving them a better view of the open space that lay ahead.

Lance felt his body tense up, his hands tightening on his controls. He hit his reverse thrusters and brought Red to an abrupt stop, feeling like he couldn’t breathe. The reaction was sudden and violent, his heart pounding so hard that for a moment it was all he could hear.

In the distance was a light, not so much bright as it was deep and pulsing, the space around it wavering and distorted from the sheer energy being expended. A massive, unshifting wormhole, the strange, permanent portal that he knew had the last remains of a destroyed Fire of Purification outpost on the other side.

It was only the fact that the girls didn’t notice and kept on going that let Lance shake the unexpected wave of terror he was feeling, concentrating forcefully on Sincline and making himself reactivate his accelerator. He could feel the air pressure in the cabin changing, the scent of the air shifting as Red changed the oxygen levels and temperature to adjust to his biological reactions.

_She’s not here. It’s safe._

“No, it’s not safe,” Lance disagreed. “She’s gotten stronger since you kicked her ass, nowhere will ever be safe again until we get rid of her.”

His line-of-sight scanners picked up the shuttle just up ahead then, and something else along with it. A bright light, starting with a bare pinprick and growing into a swirling gateway.

The rift gate.

“Uh oh, looks like these things are trying to go home,” Veronica observed. “What happens if Kuro and Curtis pass through that thing in an unprotected shuttle?”

“Overexposure, if they’re in there for more than a few moments,” Allura replied. Lance could tell just from the sound that she had her teeth clenched as Sincline abruptly put on speed. “Even worse if they leave the ship’s radiation-treated hull. The entities inside them may make it back to their own environment, but it will certainly kill Curtis and Kuro in the process.”

The shuttle disappeared into the light, and the rift gate quickly began to close. Allura let out a loud swear that Veronica echoed even louder, and Romelle gave a desperate little squeak. Lance pushed his accelerator to the limit, sticking to the mechs side as closely as possible as they sped toward the closing gate, squeezing his eyes shut as they reached it. He heard a loud “clang” and felt the vibration as Red scraped her hindquarters.

_Stay close!_

Lance didn’t recognize the youthful voice that called out, or the two more that echoed behind it.

_Close!_

_Stay very close!_

“Oh my God, I’ve been in here half a second and I’m losing it,” Lance whispered.

“No, I heard it too,” Romelle replied. “That’s Opal, Jade, and Carnelian.”

“We’re in their home turf, they must be able to project farther,” Veronica added. “I’m guessing this place gets dangerous if you spread out. Don’t go too far, Short Stuff.”

“I am not short!” Lance growled, even as he edged Red closer to Sincline just to be safe. “I can see the shuttle. Let’s grab it and get out of here, pronto! This place gives me the creeps.”

Sincline took off toward the ship, moving past him. Red twisted around of her own accord, closing her jaws around the tip of the mech’s tail and letting herself be pulled along by the larger mass against the currents of the quintessence field.

_They’re here to recharge_, Red’s voice came this time, and from the soft noises on the comm Lance knew the girls could hear her right now as well. _Like a battery…if the Iron one dies with no power left it will take far, far longer to build up enough strength to be reborn. The Gold one is likely simply coming back home._

“Hang on!” Allura called to him as Sincline reached out, ready to grab the shuttle when they got close enough and make a break for it. “Be ready in case one of them puts up a fight!”

* * * * * * * * * *

Gold watched the image on the viewscreen, absently tapping the fingernails of one hand against the console as the motley little group approached. He paused in his tapping to look down at the hand in question, flexing the long fingers and rotating the wrist.

In healthier times, this body would have been exceptional. There were echoes of lost strength and speed in its muscle memory, which moved the long limbs and balanced the above-average height with an elegance only slightly marred by its current weakness. The memories this man’s loved ones had of him were undoubtedly lively and vibrant, and he seemed to possess a kindness of the sort that probably earned him great respect among his peers.

Perhaps it was good, then, that this mildly annoying young woman and her cohorts had followed. Curtis had been willing to give up a proper burial, something that Gold could see now was extremely important in his religious faith, to try and help Kuro. Now that delivery had been made, he deserved to have his body returned to his home soil.

The mech came in close, an arm reaching out toward the shuttle, and Gold snapped his fingers. The Sincline froze, and the Red Guardian’s ship along with it, suspended motionless in a now-unmoving pocket of the quintessence field. The shuttle’s functions were frozen as well, locked up with the pausing of time, and on the floor beside him Kuro’s shallow breathing and faint heart rate came to a stop.

“What a gods-damned mess,” Gold sighed, running both hands through his hair.

He didn’t do anything else, only remained silent and waited. The rift was close to the borderlands, just on the other side of a thin veil, and the sudden outside presence would be sensed. It wasn’t long before he felt the approach of several familiar presences, followed by a firm tug urging him to relinquish his host and phase through the veil. They were skittish about the mech and the presence of the Red Guardian, perhaps wondering if these things once again heralded the arrival of the great, dark thing that had intruded into their space ten thousand years ago.

Gold leaned over and rested a hand on Kuro’s chest, gently urging the core out of the frozen physical body. It was weak and dull, only a bare little spark compared to the grand, glaring light it should have been. Gold sighed and sat back, closing his eyes and letting the time freeze extend to his host, gently pulling away from the confines of the physical.

When he opened his eyes again he was standing at the top of the Tower. Not the real Tower over in the borderlands, the crumbling remains of past greatness. This was a construct, similar to an astral plane, one in which the Tower once again stood in its full glory. It stood high above the clouds with no ground to be seen, and a vast expanse of glittering stars and constellations overhead of the open rooftop meeting place.

Leader and Once-Tin were waiting for him, resplendent as expected in armor that couldn’t be dulled by the eons worth of nicks and dents that war with the Formless had brought. They were tense, perhaps not knowing what to expect, but the pensive expressions melted away to recognition as they saw what he carried and sprinted across the tower top to reach them.

“Alive?” Once-Tin asked breathlessly, helping him lower the slender form in his arms to the floor. “How?”

“Barely, and probably not for long,” Gold corrected. “The how is a very long story. She’s been bonded, that’s why I had to wait here instead of coming farther.”

The core the two women fretted over no longer physically resembled Che’lohdi. It was more of a featureless form made out of light, with only minor details of the shape to pick up on. Bulkier than the average female, smaller than the average male, the same six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other that had marked the half-Iron’s inability to be categorized since her birth.

_Her_ birth. _She’s_ been bonded. Gold had to consciously take a step back and recognize that he had to stop boxing this person in with what he had known before and acknowledge the reality of now.

“_His_ name is Kuro,” he corrected himself. “He hasn’t had any kind of recharge since he first crossed over as Che’lohdi ten thousand decaphoebs ago, he’s just been surviving on small bits of quintessence that were tossed to him and from the overflow of a quantum abyss. He burnt out the last he had fighting some Formless on a planet in the nearby reality.”

“Formless are in the realities?” Leader asked, looking up sharply. “Still? The hole was sealed, anything over there should have died by now.”

“Should have,” Gold agreed. “Didn’t. That big thing that we saw cross over…it’s unlike any Formless I’ve ever seen. It has a puppet host and it’s basically been running wild for the last ten millennia. It’s found some gifted species and has been using them to host its creepy minions. Three attacked the planet we were on…in mechs designed to mimic Reaper feeding.”

Once-Tin looked up from cradling Kuro’s head in her lap, giving Leader a worried look.

“The technology there is capable of recreating a quintessence breakdown?”

“Yes,” Gold nodded. “Only instead of being used to clear out the last bits of a dead universe, it’s being used to make the universe dead. And I don’t think I have to tell you that with the knowledge of the rift gate I just used, this thing will be able to hop from universe to universe and drain them all until there’s nothing left.”

A shadow swooped overhead, an unnecessarily dramatic entrance given that this was just a mental creation and not real, as a familiar winged-creature dropped down to perch on the crenellations at the edge of the tower. The Onyx balanced there for a few ticks then stepped down as he shifted down to two legs.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Onyx said, in the most unapologetic tone anyone could muster. “I was on my way to investigate some fledglings and I overheard the conversation.”

“You mean you eavesdropped,” Gold corrected. “Just come out and say it, we all know it. We never would’ve asked for your help if we weren’t all aware you were nosy as hell.”

Onyx smiled airily. Gold gestured back the way he’d come with his head.

“There are three adolescents,” he said. “An Opal, a Jade, and a Carnelian. They were picked up in the quintessence field while a trans-dimensional ship was being tested.”

“A mix of three, alone out by the rift?” Onyx asked, frowning. “That doesn’t bode well for their parents.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Leader agreed. “The most likely scenario is that they were being moved from their birth nests to join their troupes out in one of the realities, and were ambushed by Formless.”

“I agree,” Gold said. “From what I can tell, the ships were being tested in an area along a common migration route. The three surviving children probably banded together and hid until they sensed safety.”

“What kind of safety is anyone going to find on a mortal ship?” Onyx asked.

“This kind,” Gold answered.

He gave a wave of his arm, and the edge of the projection collapsed. Half of the starry sky and cloud-covered tower folded away, revealing the frozen bubble of space holding the shuttle, Sincline, and Red Lion. Another gesture and Sincline’s skin peeled away, the entire mech separating into a cloud of its base components. The change laid bare the three pilots, but Gold was only interested in one in particular. The nuts, bolts, and metal sheets shifted out of the way at his gesture, revealing the young Altean queen. She looked grim and determined, frozen in the motions of piloting her ship.

Onyx stepped away from the tower edge, drifting upward to come face to face with her. He tilted his head thoughtfully from left to right and back again, considering the mortal he was presented with.

“She’s powerful,” he finally admitted, looking back at the three Golds below. “Extremely. It’s a very positive energy.”

“It’s the kind of energy Formless shy away from,” Gold agreed. “I’ve seen it. The entity building its army over there, it hates this young woman.”

“A once-in-a-generation mutation that makes her stronger than other gifted members of her species, most likely,” Once-Tin mused. “I imagine it would not want to see her live to reproduce and spread that trait.”

“Especially not with a bonded Silver,” Gold agreed. “The cub that was taken shortly before the hole was finally closed, he’s also alive and well. He was force-bonded to the child of the dark entity’s host…probably to secure her compliance. A life for a life.”

“Then that may mean there’s still a chance to separate the parasite from the mortal?” Onyx asked.

“Not without killing her, but at this point it is what it is,” Gold replied. “I don’t want to sound callous, but this woman, “Honerva,” sounds to have earned her punishment with her own selfish choices. Separating the entity to defeat it is paramount, ensuring her survival in the process is…unimportant at best. Even if Honerva’s core were to be destroyed, it would be no great loss to its universe.”

“All life is precious,” Leader chastised gently. “Even life that’s sinned. How does a soul learn and grow if it doesn’t get another turn on the wheel? I understand from your words that this woman has caused great suffering, but existence balances itself. Whether through observation or her own pain during future cycles, she will come to understand acts such as hers are wrong and will begin the long process of redemption.”

She paused, looking uncomfortable, then cleared her throat.

“That being said, you’re correct. The safety of one core, precious as it may be, can’t come at the cost of existence as a whole.”

“That’s the most proper “oh, fuck her” I’ve ever heard anyone say,” Onyx said dryly.

“What are you even doing here?” Gold asked, rounding on the Sentinel. “You’re not usually around here unless you have news. Please tell me you have news.”

“I do,” Onyx perked up, as if just now remembering. “I think I found traces of the Dark God.”

This was indeed news, and good news at that. Gold tried very hard not to hope, the gods had been gone for so very long, but he couldn’t completely hold down the faint flutter that rose in his chest.

“He was gone by the time I tracked it completely,” Onyx continued. “Hopped over to another reality, most likely. But the trail was hard to follow…there’s a lot of motion between the borders these days. I think some of the Originals are starting to move.”

The Originals. The first generations of Reapers, Sentinels and Guardians, long since disappeared from the quintessence field. Gold shared the opinion of his colleagues, that they had either bonded and gone off into the realities seeking adventure, or had somehow evolved to a higher state and were no longer part of existence as they knew it.

“Have you come across any?” Once-Tin asked eagerly.

“Nada,” Onyx shook his head. “They move quietly, all I get are the occasional traces of their wake. But this evidence that the Dark God is out there, that’s what I’ve been looking for, right? That the gods are still here?”

“Still here and doing nothing,” Leader noted. “Why would the Father be out wandering the realities and ignoring our desperate calls for help?”

“Maybe he’s not,” Gold suggested, though he didn’t really believe his own words. “Onyx says there are Originals moving, maybe he’s calling them.”

“Or seeking them out,” Once-Tin added. “But either way, that doesn’t bode well. None of the gods should be afraid of going up against a Formless.”

“It’s not just any Formless,” Onyx replied. “The Mage finally made an appearance, after making me look for them for so long.”

“Finally,” Leader breathed. “For the one deity that’s supposed to be the most accessible, they don’t’ really like to be found, do they?”

“They like making people work for it,” Onyx shrugged indifferently. Of course a Sentinel, a creature of chaos and confusion, archetype for trickster gods across many a universe, would be unbothered by his creator’s unpredictability. “They hinted that this thing isn’t just a normal enemy, but they talk in riddles so I didn’t really come out of that with any more solid information than before.”

“Where did you find them?” Gold asked.

“There,” Onyx nodded in the direction Gold had come. “In that universe you were dallying around in. They’ve been watching the goings-on from a distance, and I don’t think I have to tell you that if a god is afraid of getting involved the situation’s ridiculously dangerous.”

“So that’s it, then?” Gold asked. “Everything we’ve been through so far, at the point where everything in existence is basically teetering on the edge, and that’s all we’ve got? The Lord is out there wandering somewhere, great-great-great-grandpa is migrating for the winter, the Lady is still completely MIA, and the Mage is spitting riddles?”

“So, just a regular Tuesday,” Onyx mused. “But, the Mage works in mysterious ways—”

“Secret even to themselves,” Leader muttered.

“—and I have the feeling they’re not done speaking to us yet.”

A vibration ran through the quintessence field, calling everyone’s attention.

“Someone’s entered from the other side,” Leader noted.

“It’s familiar,” Once-Tin agreed, looking up at Gold. “The other Guardians, I think. The ones that were with this Red one last time.”

“Probably looking for her,” Gold supposed, frowning as he reached out to track them. “But they’re going the wrong way.”

“The rift is confusing for anyone not used to traversing it, they’re going to get lost,” Leader frowned.

“I’ll handle it,” Onyx volunteered, stepping away from the others. He hopped up on the crenellations, giving a jump up into the air as he returned to his natural, much larger form. “They need to be stopped before they go too far toward the Between.”

He removed himself from the construct, disappearing back into the quintessence field to track down the four other Lions that had followed the Red one, and undoubtedly their four idiot pilots. Gold looked down at Kuro, still lying unmoving with his head in Once-Tin’s lap. Mostly featureless, nothing but a body-shaped form of slowly dulling light.

“I have to remove him from the shuttle,” Gold decided. “Before the mech gets to us. Direct contact with the quintessence field might give him the power surge he needs to at least be strong enough for a rebirth in the next century. It’s a shame…I’d hoped there would be time for his children and parents to see him before he was lost to the universe’s quintessence pool.”

“Time has become a luxury,” Leader replied, helping Once-Tin lift Kuro back into Gold’s arms. “Even we have to worry about the sands in the vargaglass now, and they’re quickly running low. I’ll send Onyx to investigate these traces of the Dark God further, I’m starting to worry he may be our last and only chance at survival now. Che’lohdi’s family can at least be informed that he lives, as can the Silver cub’s. Will you be returning with us?”

“I’ll probably hang out around here,” Gold admitted, nodding toward the still-dismantled Sincline. In an instant, all of the pieces had flown back together and seamlessly rebuilt themselves around the three frozen pilots. “Keep watch on this portal, bug Onyx as he comes and goes. Wait and see if the Mage drops by.”

Leader nodded, putting up no argument, and Gold’s heart sank. The fact that she didn’t tell him to come back immediately, didn’t tell him he was needed to help keep the last bits of their part of the borderlands intact…that meant there was very little left to keep together.

“I’ll send someone to you when we know something,” she replied. “Let me know immediately if the situation there changes.”

Gold nodded, and closed his eyes. He felt the projection of the tower begin to withdraw, the construct folding in on itself and disappearing. A second later he was once again in his more physical phase, opening the eyes of his voluntary host to see the insides of the shuttle. He knelt down to settle the fading light in his hands against Kuro’s chest, returning the core to its place, and took a breath.

Snapping his fingers, he let the little bubble of frozen time snap forward.

* * * * * * * * * *

Allura watched in horror as the shuttle airlock opened, exactly the last thing she wanted to see happen here in this environment. The ship’s hull wasn’t made of any kind of trans-reality material, but at least an unbroken shell would provide minimal protection for a few minutes.

The airlock opening removed any possibility of safety even for that long. And she knew it was over when she saw Curtis step out, pushing away from the ship with Kuro in his arms.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Allura muttered, wrenching control of the ship’s arms from Romelle rather than wasting precious seconds giving orders.

Curtis reached up and pulled off Kuro’s helmet. It was one last, weak motion before he stopped moving altogether, and both bodies floated motionlessly in the sea of light.

Allura grabbed them both, trying her best to balance gentle handling with speed as she turned the mech around and shot back the way they’d come. She pushed the ship full throttle, slamming the touchscreen repeatedly on Sincline’s remote opener for the rift gate even though a simple, light touch would do.

“Oh God,” she half-heard Lance whimpering over the comms, barely remembering that Red was clinging to the mech’s tail for dear life. “Oh God, oh God…now I know how Acxa felt last time…oh God, I’m going to be sick…”

Sincline shot through the rift gate and out into open space, where Lance finally released Red’s hold and immediately darted around to catch the two unsheltered bodies in her jaws.

“Guys, we need a wormhole!” Lance exclaimed over the comms. “I’m sending coordinates, get one open!”

Allura held her breath, waiting for the transport to appear. Her heart was beating fast, her fists clenching with her inability to do anything but wait, having no teludav available to activate herself.

“Guys?” Lance called. “Pidge, you still online? Keith? Hunk? Adam?”

“_Lance?_” It was, unexpectedly, Shiro’s voice that replied. “_This is the Atlas. The others aren’t here, aren’t they with you? We sent them by wormhole a few minutes ago to your last broadcasted location._”

“No, it’s just me and the girls,” Lance answered. “We have Curtis and Kuro here, and we need to get them to the medical bay, stat.”

“_Hang on,_” Shiro advised. “_Adam dropped me on the Atlas before they followed you. It just finished unloading Altean patients, we’ll bring the medical bay to you. Stand by._”

Ticks clicked by like quintants, dragging on so painfully slowly that eventually Allura feared time had stopped altogether. By the time the light of another wormhole opened and the Atlas arrived she was practically chomping at the bit.

Red flew ahead of them this time, making a desperate, skidding-landing in the Lion hangar that dragged her claws across the metal floors and caused a shower of sparks. Her head dropped and her mouth opened, and Lance appeared to wave wildly at the approaching med techs as Sincline came in for a slightly more elegant landing.

By the time Allura climbed down the side of the mech, Curtis and Kuro were on gurneys. Curtis wasn’t moving, but Kuro’s eyes were open. Not that it meant any good news, they were unfocused and probably unseeing at this point.

Exhaustion was starting to take its toll. Willpower and adrenaline could only carry her so far after everything she’d been through, and she could feel herself hitting a wall.

Even so, she pushed on. She ignored Veronica and Romelle to chase after the gurneys, feeling guilty but knowing that time was of the essence. Lance caught up with her, limping slightly himself, still just as torn up and tired as she was. And ahead of them, waiting by the double doors into the emergency room, stood Shiro.

“What happened?” He asked desperately as he flattened himself against the wall, getting his first look at the two bodies being rushed passed. “What’s going on?”

“The entity from down in the holding chamber,” Allura answered, finally slowing down and gingerly entering the emergency room with him. She, Shiro, and Lance stayed back, watching in a dull sort of shock as two of their own were tended to. Medics began gutting away Curtis’ flight suit, using strange paddles to run a shock of electricity through him. “It was using Curtis. It took Kuro, and…and…”

She lost focus on her own words, watching the doctors work. Someone was taking Kuro’s pulse, but even as she watched she could see his chest rise and fall…and then stop.

“Move,” she ordered, stepping forward. None of the archaic tools could help here, and she knew the healing pods were already taken up with victims of the battle on Colony Two. She pushed several of the techs out of her way, forcing her way over to Curtis’ gurney. “MOVE! Lance!”

“Got it!” She heard him call back, but she didn’t watch to see what he did, instead focusing on her own patient.

Maybe Lance wouldn’t win any medical awards back on Altea, but he had been putting his heart into learning with the full intent on helping as many people as he could. She trusted him to handle this, if it could be handled at all.

“Come on Curtis,” she whispered, resting her hands on his temples and closing her eyes, reaching out for any trace of consciousness she could find. She could not let one of their inner circle die like this, not after how hard everyone had fought to survive today. “Come back to us, please…”

There was nothing. No matter how hard she pushed or how deep she reached, she could find no traces of life. Not Curtis’, not the strange entity that had taken him. But she continued to try, telling herself that it was only because she was tired. She was stretched to her limit, of course it would be hard, but hard didn’t mean it was impossible. There was something here, there had to be, some last little thread that she could grab onto and pull back…

“Nothing.” Lance’s whisper hit her like a speeding train, telling her what she already knew. What she was already seeing for herself. There was nothing here, as far as her senses could see, these shells were empty. “We’re too late, there’s too much damage.”

He was right, of course. The hope that this could be fixed, it was the naivete of a little girl who had yet to grow up and accept that she couldn’t magically protect everyone this time around. Who wanted to pretend that casualties could be avoided this time around, that love and determination would ultimately save the day just like in all the fairytales.

“I’m sorry,” Allura murmured, her voice quiet as she bit back tears, knowing how much Kuro and Curtis meant to Shiro and Adam and what this would do to them. “I tried to get to them. Sincline wasn’t fast enough, we didn’t get to the shuttle in time. They…”

She pressed the heels of both hands against her eyes, trying to block the stupid crying she knew was going to come. She was a grown woman in the middle of a war, when was she going to learn how to be strong like her parents had been? It was the frustration, she told herself, the fatigue and the stress finally coalescing.

“Guys? We gotta go,” Lance said suddenly, the urgency in his voice effectively shutting down her pity party. “This is about to get ugly in here.”

Allura dropped her hands away to find small droplets of light beginning to drift upward from the bodies, a soft shimmer settling over Curtis’ and Kuro’s skin. She had seen this before, ten thousand years ago, and she immediately went on alert.

“They’re shedding quintessence,” she declared, following Lance’s example and beginning to push doctors and techs away from the gurneys. “Get back! It’s like radiation, you can suffer from secondary exposure!”

“Seal the room!” Lance commanded as everyone fell over each other to rush out into the hallway. “Nobody in or out until it’s safe!”

Allura reached for the door controls at the same time as Shiro. The two of them ended up in a tangle of limbs as they both tried to do the same thing, both ending up tiredly leaning back against the closed doors as the emergency seals clicked into place, hopefully keeping anyone outside of it safe from accidental leakage.

She looked up at Shiro, who looked as lost and pained as she felt. But she saw something else familiar on his face as well: resolve. He didn’t want to mourn in front of an audience any more than she did.

“You haven’t heard from the others?” He asked, his sudden topic switch almost disturbingly incongruous with the situation at hand, as if nothing had just happened in the emergency room. Or, as if he wasn’t ready to confront what had occurred. “They were out probably about half an hour after you were gone.”

“Nothing,” Lance replied, looking back and forth between them.

Of the three of them, his expression was the open book. But Lance wasn’t as hardened as Allura or Shiro, his more empathetic instinct was to openly be sad, and this sudden shift to ignoring two blatant deaths was obviously confusing for him.

“Okay,” Shiro took a deep, shaky breath and carefully extricated himself from Allura. They both rose and straightened up as Romelle and Veronica appeared, moving at a much slower pace. “Let’s go to the bridge and try to hail them again. They have to be out here somewhere.”

“We’ll sweep the area,” Allura suggested, running the sleeve of her armor across her eyes to capture the bit of escaped moisture. “Lance can join you on the bridge, we’ll break down Sincline and spread out.”

“Everybody be careful,” Shiro advised, his voice getting stronger as he switched automatically over to Leader mode, hiding for the moment behind the facade of the strong Captain. “I’m sure they’re fine, they may have gone in the wrong direction and be on their way back right now. But don’t let your guard down, just in case.”

Allura nodded, gesturing with her head for Veronica and Romelle to follow. They had come much slower, not wanting to be in the way, and she could tell from their faces that they already knew what had happened.

She started jogging back the way they’d come, toward the hangars, wordlessly heading back to Opal.

Where she could have a moment to be weak, in the quiet privacy of her ship’s dim, empty cockpit.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a really quick update on my way to bed, because I know I'll forget if I wait until after work tomorrow to post.
> 
> Um, quick warning...I try not to make anything graphic, and to me personally a lot of this isn't. But given some of the reactions I got to Adam's fight on the plateau with Honerva, I'm going to stick a big old red flag in the second half/final third of this chapter. There's some violence, some creepiness, some general horror-movie-esque elements. Specifically, there's a stabbing warning. Again, it's not super graphic and not like, torture porn, but it's there.

**_Two hours ago_**:

Keith slammed his fist angrily on his dead console, letting out a soft string of swears at his own stupidity. That the zaiforge cannon was a trap should have been obvious, it simply didn’t make sense that someone who had weakened himself so much trying to help save this planet would just turn around and wreck it again on a whim.

It was fatigue, he knew. Saying the Paladins were some of the best of the best that Earth had to offer wasn’t just patting his friends on the back, they had become some of the toughest fighters in the universe over the last few years. To be caught up by something so simple, it was because their edge had been dulled by overexertion. Physical and mental exhaustion was slowing them down.

He could feel an echo of his own anger running through Black. The Air Guardian did not like to be made a fool of and he felt slighted, probably moreso than Keith after extending his own vessel for that Gold thing to temporarily use in the fight.

The silence broke, Black’s cockpit lights flaring back on and the overlays starting to come back up.

“Keith, you hear me?”

“Pidge!” Keith scrambled to turn on his viewscreen, finding the green Paladin bound to Black’s muzzle by the soles of her armor boots. “I hear you, looks like I’m coming back up. What’d you do?”

“Allura left us one of those Zero crystals before Sincline and Red left to chase down that shuttle. Like I said, not so great for weird, quintessence field entities, but works wonders to recharge a warship.”

“Everything was down in here, do you know where everyone went?” Keith asked, already turning on his scanners to try and look for Red and Sincline.

“Through a wormhole,” Pidge replied. “Green’s doing a backscan to try and trace the end coordinates. I’ll have Blue and Yellow up in just a minute!”

She detached from Black and used her thrusters to jet over to Blue, holding the small, glowing crystal against the hull until the Lion started to boot back up and then moving on to do the same for Yellow. The three Lions drifted around her while she jetted back up to Green, blocking the various bits of space debris that still orbited after defeating Sendak’s ship’s from hitting her until she was safely inside.

“I’ve got a destination,” she chirped as she appeared on the comm screens, dropping into her seat. “Sending over the coordinates.”

“Got them,” Keith said after a minute. “And I could probably get there in decent time by myself, but obviously we don’t want to do that. Can we get a wormhole?”

“Might want to hold off for a minute,” Hunk warned. “I’m looking at these coordinates, and they don’t match Red’s last broadcasted location.”

“I’m not getting a response from Lance, either,” Adam added, looking up from where he’d been fiddling with his controls. “Do you think something happened?”

“I think it’s Lance,” Pidge answered. “You’d think that having Allura and his sister nearby would stop him from getting too adventurous, but…it’s Lance. And…oh. Wait. Guys, we know these coordinates.”

Keith glanced up from his own controls. He had been trying to get a more current location broadcast, the last one Black had was from about ten minutes ago. Nothing was coming up though.

Pidge brought up a star map, zeroing in on Red’s last location. Keith sucked in air through his teeth.

“That’s where we had to destroy the Castle of Lions,” he realized.

“It’s also where Honerva moved the rift gate when she repaired it,” Pidge answered. “It’s attached to a weak point in the spacetime fabric there, a weak point we helped create.”

“The rift gate…that’s the thing Honerva made Lance go through to get Sincline,” Adam remembered. “This thing is taking Kuro into the quintessence field?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Hunk asked. “Curtis said Kuro would need to drain at least a couple stars to be healthy again, what better way to get around that than to dump him directly into the quintessence field? We could only give him a trickle, he needed a river. This is an ocean.”

“What if Lance went back in?” Pidge asked worriedly. “I don’t think either he or Allura would just sit back and watch Curtis and Kuro be taken away into the quintessence field.”

“That would explain why we’re not getting an answer,” Keith frowned. “We have to get out there. What about that wormhole?”

“The base is checking the teludav now, but it doesn’t sound like it’s powered up to function yet. It went down with everything else,” Pidge replied. “We need the Lorelia or the Atlas.”

“If we’re going back out to where that rift gate is, we might also need backup,” Adam said reluctantly. “It may be quiet, but that’s still in disputed Galra space. A faction cruiser could come along at any time.”

“I agree. Hunk, can you go check on the Atlas’ progress and see if they can be in the air and ready in case we call for help?” Keith asked. “Adam, can you go grab Shiro and get him to the ship? I know he needs to rest, but we also both know that if we don’t give him something to do he’ll find something to do himself. Probably something more dangerous than sitting on the Atlas bridge. Make it quick, guys, we need to get out there and investigate what’s going on right away.”

They both grunted in affirmative and veered away, leaving Black floating quietly above Earth, dwarfing Green beside him. Keith rubbed both eyes with his hands, desperately wishing he could get a shower to remove what felt like six inches of grime from his skin and just lie down in his bed with some food. He dropped his hands away and leaned back in his seat, nervously tapping the fingers of one hand against his armrest as he quietly watched his teammates’ concentration-induced grimaces on his screen.

Everyone was tired, not just him. Everyone was hurt. Not even only the Paladins, but the Lions as well and, as he’d now found out, the Atlas crew and the Alteans from both colonies.

He honestly didn’t know how much farther he had a right to push everyone, and was thankful he hadn’t yet reached a point where he had to order anyone to act through their exhaustion. So far his team was biting back their complaints and pushing forward, unwilling to let people they thought of as family run off without backup.

Adam leapt up from his seat and disappeared, probably already landed. Keith watched his clock, their time already at five minutes, knowing it would take anywhere between fifteen minutes to half an hour to get one of the ships moving. He could see the Atlas and cruiser down below, a few miles north of the base, with the Yellow Lion circling as he listened to Hunk speaking to Coran to find out if there was any help he could give.

Adam reappeared with Shiro, and Blue went to join Yellow. Adam muted his speaker after that but forgot to turn off his visuals, so the kiss they shared was visible to everyone. Keith at least had the decency to look away, but after a few moments it apparently got to be too much for Pidge.

“Could you two get a room?” She asked, making a face as the two of them leapt apart. “Later, obviously, not now.”

Keith gave only a “hm” of agreement. At another time he would have made a snarky comment of his own, but both men had been through a lot today and it wasn’t like it was too much to ask to have a moment.

Maybe that was his developing relationship with Lance talking rather than any meaningful personal growth, though.

Adam briefly turned off his visuals. When they returned he was alone in the cockpit, making a face as he tried to adjust his armor in a way that might somehow allay the discomfort from all the blood, sweat, and dirt that plagued them all. Keith saw the Atlas beginning to rise, and Hunk turned the volume back up on his communications.

“They grabbed a couple healthy Alteans from the cruiser,” Hunk said. “The Atlas’ teludav is fully operational, they’re gonna get us where we need to be then go on standby until we need a way back.”

“Perfect,” Keith praised, flipping on a line. “Good to have you back with us, Coran!”

“Good to be back, Number Four,” Coran replied, sounding uncharacteristically tired but just as determined as the rest of them. “We’ve got some guests on the way up to the bridge, should have your wormhole open in a tick. Will you need us to come through as well?”

“Not yet,” Keith cautioned. “We don’t know what we might come up against yet. The Lions are more than capable of outrunning anything we can’t fight, no point in potentially dropping the Atlas into another battle it doesn’t need to be in.”

“Roger that. We’ll be waiting here in orbit, just in case.”

Yellow and Blue came up to join them, the Lions at least fully charged even if their pilots and the entities animating them weren’t, and a moment later the feed from the bridge came up on screen. Shiro had arrived, along with an older Altean man and woman.

“You guys be careful,” Shiro requested. “I can see you’re tired. We have another mech and a ship in the hangar here that can be deployed, so if you need help then call in for it immediately.”

“Don’t worry, I want to make this a quick search and rescue,” Keith answered. “Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think that Gold meant us any harm. I think it could have sucked the life right out of us if it wanted to, but instead it gave us a distraction and ran off. I have to assume it won’t hurt Lance or the girls either, and we know Sincline is made specifically for navigating the quintessence field…we just need to get out there and bring back whoever we can.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think the Gold will hurt you either,” Shiro answered. “We’ll need to have a long talk later, but trust me when I say I’m not worried about him hurting any of you…I think using the rift gate was more about protecting this universe from being unintentionally damaged by Ryou. But you still need to be careful, because there’s always a chance something else might come out of that rift gate besides Lance or Allura.”

“Can I interject something here?” Adam asked. “I know it’s been a very long time since any of you have heard an adult voice of reason, so I’ll try to be gentle…but do none of you actually realize what a stupid idea it is to go plunging past a boundary of our reality with no idea of what’s there except “it’s really shiny and has lots of free energy?”

Everyone paused, looking at each other over the viewscreens, and Adam sighed.

“Okay, it’s a very bad idea,” he supplied the answer for them. “We’re not built to survive there, so it stands to reason that we’re not built to do anything there. Did you all forget earlier today already? The good fifteen or so minutes we all spent with _none_ of our senses working right because we were technically between boundaries and not evolved to be there?”

Shiro’s eyebrows rose when he heard that. He tilted his head in that way he often did before he was going to ask a question, but instead of saying something his eyes unfocused slightly. A second later Keith felt a wave of irritation run through Black. That had to be a coincidence, of course, there was no way Shiro was communicating with the Black Lion. How could he be?

“Our physical senses aren’t meant for navigating the quintessence field,” Adam continued, not noticing Shiro’s expression. “Ideally, we might take that plunge if we had a gifted Altean with us who could sense the way back. But both of the ones we have aren’t with us at the moment.”

“I understand your concern,” Keith spoke up before anyone else could, not wanting this to turn into some kind of round table debate. “And you’re right, we don’t know what’s in there. But Black, Blue, Green, and Yellow do know, and now that they don’t feel like they have to hide from us anymore I think they’ll be more than adequate as guides. They’ll probably be able to sense Red and take us to her.”

_More than that_, Black said urgently. _Golds are more powerful than other Reapers, and this one may still be willing to be an ally once he’s been through the gate and recharged. He was initially here protecting Lotor and he may want to return to do that. If we can offer him a way to do that, he may continue to help us._

“Help us? Or help you?” Shiro asked sharply, his tone irritable. “You’re awfully eager to go running after this guy, considering you’re no fan of Reapers. Are you looking for an ally, or are you looking for a sucker to help you be stupid?”

_I’ve nothing more to say to you, you’re no longer of any consequence to me. You’ve made your choice, go spend your infinitely shortened lifespan being useless elsewhere._

On screen, Adam was looking critically at Shiro, wondering what had spurred him to speak since he had no connection with Black and hadn’t heard him. Adam’s eyes widened and he quickly looked down at his consoles, running his fingers lightly over the overlays as if trying to calm the suddenly angry entity within his ship, uncertain of what the issue was.

Keith, for his part, looked at Shiro in bewilderment. That was definitely a conversation with Black, there was no coincidence there. Shiro caught his look and shook his head, heaving another sigh.

“It’s a long story,” he answered Keith’s unspoken question. “Just be careful, he’s lying through his teeth about his reasoning. But his excuse is right; the Gold came here to look after Lotor and he might help us out if we make it easier for him to do that. There’s a…newly acquired Lion ship available that may suit him to use as his own avatar, you can offer that as a bargaining chip if he’s still hanging around to talk to.”

“You sure you don’t want to come along?” Keith asked, raising an eyebrow. This whole day had been weird before, now Shiro was just making it weirder. “You seem to have a lot to say on the matter.”

“I do want to come along, but I can’t,” Shiro replied, almost apologetic. “To be honest, I went through something very strenuous today, I could pass out at any time. I probably will, at some point.”

“He stays here and rests,” Adam said firmly. “We should _all _stay here and wait for Allura, Veronica, Romelle and Lance to get back, but I guess we’re going through a rift gate to try and play nice with somebody I’m already pissed off at to get favors. Let’s get this over with.”

“We might not want to let Adam do any of the diplomatic talk,” Pidge advised.

“No, no, please do,” Adam requested.

“Hunk will do any bartering and dealing we have to do,” Keith replied. “Adam will mute his comms so he can do his angry, screamy thing in privacy until we need him to kill something. We’re wasting time, let’s get that wormhole going.”

He wanted to get out there and find his friends, see for himself that they were all right and didn’t need backup. Deep down he already knew that Curtis and Kuro were probably done for, the latter had just been way too far gone for help when he’d been taken, but if possible he still wanted to help bring them home for proper rites and burial. And if it really was possible to communicate with this other entity and get some help, then he was willing to forgive being toyed with earlier if more allies meant fewer of his friends would die.

Still, as the wormhole opened and he led the others through, it was difficult to be confident. Shiro’s warning about Black had him thrown off kilter, and the very fact that his brother could hear the Guardian’s words when others couldn’t had him confused. He felt like there was suddenly a much bigger picture that had been uncovered, but that he was still missing many of the pieces that others had. Even Adam, who should have been asking way more questions when Shiro had responded to Black, seemed to be more aware of what was going on that Keith was.

But he also lacked confidence in his own reasoning. He had given some good excuses for why they needed to go, but it when it came down to it Keith was driven to find Lance and Kuro. That was it. A tiny part of him still hoped that maybe this Gold’s gamble had paid off and they would find Kuro alive, as unlikely as that was, and he wouldn’t be certain Lance was okay until he saw him with his own eyes. Too much had gone down over the last few months for him to take anything for granted.

They dropped out of the wormhole in an area of space that looked identical to any other to his eyes, vast and empty save for the billions of stars in the distance. Black’s star map aligned itself with the alien constellations in view, and the Lions all shifted to orient themselves to the maps. Up ahead was the rift gate, and Pidge immediately began attempting to crack it’s opening code.

There was no sign of the shuttle, no sign of Sincline, and no sign of the Red Lion. It looked like their search and rescue would definitely be going into the rift after all.

* * * * * * * * * *

** _Present: _ **

_“I want you to think about the fight.”_

Natille’s firm instruction echoed through Lance’s head, as crisp and clear as if it had been given only moments ago and not several months prior.

_“I want you to remember. You just survived an altercation within the quintessence field, in your Lion as part of Voltron.”_

The light. The anger. The panic. That first memory that had come to him had not been the fight with Sincline, it had been a trace of something else. Something older, something painful, something that still ached so badly that his automatic reaction was visceral and wordless. Something that having his brain messed with had initially cracked open, only to have his overexposure in the quintessence field deteriorate anything that remained of the broken stitches.

_The brightness, the strange energy that seemed to hum through Red. The desperation of the fight, a feeling of anger. The thrusters being fired, the feeling of rising almost as if coming to the surface of the sea. Voltron kneeling at the edge of the open rift, his Lion shutting down as he climbed desperately out of the hatch. Almost falling nearly the full height of Blue as he tried to slide down her side to the ground, the pain jolting up his knee as his boots hit the paving stones, the ache in his chest as he ran forward._

_Wrenching the helmet from the Black Paladin, his best friend, seeing him lying there lifeless from overexposure next to his wife…_

The memory had initially been dredged to the surface only in passing by Natille, but now it played itself over and over in front of Lance’s eyes.

Sometimes it was Zarkon and Honerva. Sometimes it was Curtis and Kuro. The faces were different, the vessel they stepped from ten thousand years apart in design, but it was the exact same scene.

_“We have known for some time that all living things carry memories of bygone times within them, locked in spiritual core of their being, and we know that overexposure affects the mind._”

Honerva had told him that, when he’d been sitting in her office with no memory of who he was and no language except an ancient one that nobody else was able to speak except for the two of them. It was the clearest explanation of why things from thousands of years ago cropped up in his head when it was stimulated just right, that his brain was now wired to access memories stored in his core, or soul, or whatever they were calling it now. Memories like the day Zarkon tricked them into taking Honerva into the quintessence field, violently brought back by seeing the exact same thing play out in front of him today.

But this wasn’t the first time today he’d had a jarring experience with an old memory. There were things in his head older than ten thousand years, things so old that nothing in this young universe could jar them loose. It had taken something older than this universe to shake him earlier today.

_Badu ini_, Kuro had rather angrily said to his opponent when he’d joined the fight. _Ora ini, ma kori-le sa tulor._

_Not today. Not any day, if I have anything to say about it._

_You don’t get any say about it_, had been the reply.

Not literally of course, that was the colloquial translation. It had been a jumbled garble of words in the translators, because the Lions had undoubtedly understood it but were unable to translate over into English’s vastly different system.

“Hey,” Shiro’s voice snapped Lance out of his daze, making him look up from the radar screen he’d been staring at. It was just pointless busy work, the Sincline ships were out doing a sweep and they would pick up anything long before Lance did from here. “Are you okay?”

Shiro looked as bad as Lance felt. Tired, dirty, occasionally swaying on his feet, this was the not-so-glorious side of battle that all those shiny recruitment videos never showed. They never explained to teenage cadets that part of being a soldier was sitting in a quiet room with a thousand-yard-stare, contemplating the blood on your hands.

“I’m fine,” Lance lied automatically, it just came out of his mouth of its own accord after so long saying it as a habit. “Well, okay, I’m not totally fine. But I’m mostly fine.”

“If there’s anything I can do, let me know,” Shiro said sincerely. “I know you’re worried about Keith, but they can’t be too far. The second we pick up the Lions’ signals, Sincline can zip over into the quintessence field and guide them back out.”

“But are we sure we can pick up their signal from here?” Lance asked worriedly. “They’re outside of our reality.”

“Their link to the Red Lion will help us pick it up,” Shiro answered confidently. “And Sincline is built to monitor a short distance past the wall of our universe.”

Lance nodded and looked dully back down at the radar, now completely sure the job he’d been given was pointless. The Atlas wouldn’t pick up any signals, only the Red Lion and Sincline.

“Hey,” Shiro said again, calling his attention back over. “They’ll be fine. They’re probably negotiating with the Golds…I promise you, none of those guys is going to let ours wander around blindly in their territory, they’ll nudge them out eventually.”

Lance sighed, running a hand through his already messy hair and looking toward Coran. The older Altean was the only other person on the bridge, and although he was pensive he didn’t seem to be overly worried. They had both been shown the video that Kuro had left for Lotor while they’d been waiting for something to happen, and Shiro had explained to them both what had happened on Colony Two.

There were a lot of things starting to come together now, a lot of questions starting to be answered.

“So this Gold,” Lance still trying to wrap his head around the names these entities organized themselves by. “If he really wanted to be so helpful, why did he hide himself except when everything went extreme? Why didn’t he just lay out for us what was going on as soon as he got here? And why didn’t any of the Lions know I was carrying him around?”

“Reapers have a natural camouflage,” Shiro answered, leaning heavily against his dais. “Living on the borders, so close to where it’s wild and dangerous, it makes it harder for enemies to sense them and hunt them down. But it also makes it impossible for potential allies to know they’re there. That’s why nobody knew that Lotor was one, and how Ryou stayed hidden for so long.

“And he didn’t do anything until it was absolutely necessary because it was hard to do. Quintessi exist on a different wavelength than people living inside of universes, they have to put in a lot of effort to affect the physical world. That means a lot of effort just to try and communicate. It was the same with the Guardians in the Lions. The only reason I was successful on Oriande as the White Lion was because I staked out a place near a white hole and got excess power from the quintessence field.”

That made sense. It was weird to hear Shiro reference his own time as the White Lion, but lance felt that perhaps he was in a unique position to understand, with his own memory now spanning lifetimes prior to this one as well.

A beeping made them both look up hopefully, but it was just a hail from a friendly vessel. A few moments later a new wormhole opened and the Lorelia appeared, moving in to dock with the Atlas. Camille was still at her post as Captain, just as she’d been for the entirety of the time Lance had known her, with Lotor seated at a communications officer console as a guest rather than as a commanding officer.

“Have you heard anything yet?” Lotor asked. He had already been brought up to speed via comm link half an hour ago and was aware of what was going on. “Any communications from the others?”

“Not yet,” Shiro replied. He was still leaning heavily on his console, and Lance thought his eyes might be drooping slightly. He had nearly passed out twice since they’d been out here, and desperately needed to rest. But he refused to leave his post until everyone was back. “I’m worried, but I’m not panicked yet. There was…no sign of any entities in the retrieved bodies, I would hope that perhaps they’re on the other side hashing out agreements with the Paladins right now.”

He was trying so hard to sound indifferent, trying to be the unflappable, confident Captain, and Lance felt for him.

“I see,” Lotor said. “You said the bodies are in the emergency room, correct? And need to be moved to isolation.”

Lance had never really seen Lotor show much emotion before, but he seemed to be in the same boat as Shiro. Tired, dirty, emotionally taxed beyond his ability to pretend. He seemed saddened, which made sense. He had been the one to release Kuro from Honerva’s lab, and had been the one Kuro had shown the most loyalty to.

“Yes, that’s correct,” Shiro answered. “You’re sure you can do that?”

“I don’t suffer from overexposure, that’s already been proven multiple times,” Lotor reminded him. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. And your crew will be able to safely move around that deck again shortly.”

He ended the transmission, and Lance gave up on the radar. He stood up and stretched.

“I’m going to go down there and watch,” he told Shiro. “Maybe there’s something I can do. I just feel so useless.”

“You’re not useless,” Shiro disagreed. “There’s just nothing useful that can be done right now except wait. There’s nothing wrong with taking a few minutes to breathe now and then, even when things are happening. Are you sure you want to go down there?”

“I’ve seen plenty of dead people by now,” Lance pointed out.

“Yes, but not friends.”

“That’s why I want to go down there. I don’t know, I just feel like ditching them alone down there in the dark is…wrong.”

Shiro studied his face for a long moment, perhaps making sure he didn’t see any reason to deny his request. Finally he sighed and nodded.

“Go ahead. Let me know if you need anything.”

“You too,” Lance answered, leaving the bridge and heading for the lift downstairs. His stomach was tied in knots and his world was upside down, and he found himself mourning the loss of what little peace they had found in the last few months almost as much as the loss of their friends.

* * * * * * * * * *

Adam fumed quietly, which was not usually the way he was used to fuming. When he was angry he liked to make sure people knew it, especially the people who had made him angry in the first place. But this time his anger wasn’t at a person, it was at an incorporeal entity who probably didn’t care how pissed off he was because in the big picture he was just some tiny little mortal that didn’t mean anything.

Not that knowing that was going to stop him from being angry, it just made him madder to not have a direct target for his ire.

He was fighting to not take that anger out on Keith right now, with a bit saved up for Takashi for later. The fact that Blue had his back and was just as angry only strengthened his confidence in his position.

“Welp,” Adam finally spoke up, already knowing that his words would not be well-received. “I’m seeing a whole lotta nothing.”

“I’m aware,” Keith replied grimly.

They floated uneventfully through a sea of light, their navigation instruments useless, relying pretty much completely on the Guardians in their Lions to guide them on their trip. But given that a small argument had broken out about which way to go pretty much as soon as they’d come through the rift gate, Adam wasn’t feeling overly confident in following the Black Lion.

“Hey, wait, I see something,” Adam said, pretending to shield his eyes and look out into the distance. “It’s…oh, no, my bad. It’s just more nothing. In fact, I think we passed that particular patch of shiny nothing twice already.”

“Do you think you’re somehow being helpful?” Keith shot back.

“I was being helpful when I told you it was a bad idea to come in here,” Adam pointed out. “And I’m being helpful again when I point out you’re putting a lot of faith into someone Takashi basically said wasn’t trustworthy.”

“Your boyfriend is just jealous that Keith is leading the Paladins while he’s stuck on the bridge of a ship he never wanted to Captain,” Black shot back, his own irritation evident out here where the quintessence field magnified his voice for all of them to hear. “Shut up already. Or do you want to lead this outing?”

“Uh, obviously,” Adam returned. “Yes.”

Black went quiet for a moment, as if uncertain of how to handle that response.

“…no,” he said finally. “Keith is the leader.”

“Keith hasn’t been leading anything,” Keith finally snapped, his own nerves getting the better of him. “Keith has been following your suggestions since we came in here, because you said you felt something in this direction and were sure it could be the Gold we were looking for.”

“Even though _some_ of us told you that’s impossible because you can’t sense Reapers,” Blue added sulkily. “That’s me, I’m some of us.”

“I believe you when you say you sense something,” Green interrupted, trying to be more delicate than Blue. “You’re certainly better trained in more elements than we are. But Blue is right, even you wouldn’t sense a Gold. None of us are familiar with the rift, perhaps it would be best if we returned to our entry point and searched there. At the very least, we should be able to contact Red from there.”

Adam felt this statement ruffle Blue’s feathers even more, and with good reason. Yellow and Green had both pointed out that the farther they went from the “surface” of the rift, the harder it would be for their communications to stay in contact with anyone on the other side. Everyone had wanted to stay close to the rift gate, under the assumption that the Golds would know they were there and would eventually come to them.

But no, this Black Guardian was turning out to be something of a pompous ass. But what made Adam really angry about it was that he was obviously playing Keith against everyone else to get what he wanted, while everyone aside from Adam and Blue was either too young or too close to the situation to really see it. Blue got pissed off every time Black dared to even breathe at this point, and to be honest, Adam was behind her in that one hundred percent.

Keith’s loss of patience now was the first opportunity so far to turn this around, and Adam gave it a shot.

“There’s nothing here,” he said reasonably, doing his best to sound rational and calm. For some reason, nobody noticed how smart he actually was if he was yelling. A failure on their part rather than his, surely. “I know the Quintessence field is filled with different environments and ecosystems, and that all of that will still look like nothing but light to us because we don’t have the senses to see it, I get that. But there’s literally nothing here. Look at your scanners. They were at least picking up data signals when we first came in, now they’re quiet. If the quintessence field can be equated to an ocean, we dropped off the abyssal shelf a while back and we’re just going farther into dead space.”

“He’s right,” Yellow backed him up, being careful to try not to offend Black. “I think we’re headed into the Beyond.”

“The Beyond,” Hunk repeated nervously. “Well that sounds nice and horrifying.”

“What’s the Beyond?” Katie wondered. She sounded far more curious than scared.

“We call it the Beyond, in some dialects it’s the Between,” Blue answered. “Think of each reality as an egg, with the universe at its center, in the yolk. It’s surrounded by the egg white, which is the rift. Then it has the thin shell, which is the Borderlands or Border, that’s where the Reapers live. Put a big bunch of those eggs into a huge bowl of water, that liquid surrounding everything is the quintessence field.

“Now imagine that the yolk moves around inside its shell…it expands and contracts and just does all the things that a living universe does. Sometimes it’s closer to one side of the shell than the other, sometimes it’s even touching it. All of the eggs are piled in the middle of the bowl, so sometimes universes are close enough to touch if a hole cracks open in the shells…black holes, white holes, rift gates, trans-reality comet rifts.”

“The water outside the pile of eggs is the quintessence field,” Green picked up on her analogy. “But inside the pile there are still spaces between the eggs. This is the Beyond, or the Between. It’s the space where there’s nothing. Everything else is made up of existence, but in these places there isn’t anything. Because down in the bottom of the bowl, underneath the pile of eggs, there’s a small hole where anything that happens to leak into these in between spaces is immediately sucked outside of the whole bowl and into oblivion.”

“The bowl itself would be the edges of what even we know, in case that’s not clear,” Blue added. “The quintessence field seems to go on forever, but we logically know it has edges. This has been proven by the fact that the nothing beyond has begun to eat away at those edges of our world. Past those edges, as far as we know, is nothing. Bad things come from there.”

“If there’s nothing there, how does anything come from it?” Keith asked skeptically.

It was a fair question as far as Adam was concerned, but the four Guardians sighed almost collectively as one. This was apparently the kind of question whose answer was beyond their ability to comprehend.

“Just take it as fact that things come from it,” Green advised. “Monstrosities, abominations. Things that follow no known rules of science or nature because they’re beyond nature.”

“In short, we do not want to go there,” Yellow said succinctly. “And I think we’re painfully close to one of those pockets.”

“You’d think correctly,” a new voice agreed, coming in over the speakers.

A huge, dark shape sped by, circling around them quickly and forcing them all to come to a halt. When they did, it stopped moving and came to drift weightlessly in front of them where they all could see it.

“…is that a dragon?” Hunk said flatly. “We’re there, aren’t we? Off the map? Here there be dragons? Oh no.”

“He’s a Sentinel,” Black said irritably, his patience with the nervousness of the humans in their care clearly starting to thin. “An adult version of the younger creatures that currently inhabit the Sincline.”

The Sentinel was huge, larger than the Black Lion and probably about half the size of Voltron by itself, if not larger. Its wings weren’t even open all the way, if they were they’d probably block out most of the viewscreen. Adam had never seen anything so horrifying in his life, that weird mech of Kuro’s excluded, it was completely at odds with the calm, masculine voice that came over the comms.

“You’re the friends of the Queen girl and the Red Guardian, I assume?” The Sentinel asked. “You’re a little bit off course.”

“I _told_ you,” Blue whispered petulantly.

“_Shut it_,” Black shot back.

“You’re talking about Allura and the Red Lion?” Keith asked hopefully, ignoring them both. “They’re in here?”

“Probably not anymore,” the Sentinel replied. “They just came in for a quick dip to try and grab one of the Golds and his friend. I’ve been chasing you all for half a varga to tell you that, but you’ve been traveling with a wild tide and moving pretty fast.”

“Oh, crap,” Yellow murmured.

“A wild tide is like a rip current,” Blue supplied before they had to ask. “We’re moving into dead space so fast because we’re caught in a current that’s pushing us out toward the Beyond.”

“So let’s get out of it,” Adam answered logically. “We’ll turn around and go back.”

“Easier said than done,” Green replied. “We’ve changed direction several times, the reason you’ve “seen the same patch of nothing twice” is because we’ve probably passed it twice. We’re caught up in something that’s pushing us along faster than we can move.”

“I can pull you out one at a time, but we have to move quickly,” the Sentinel advised. “There’s a runvilar circling this tide waiting for your pride to split and make easier targets.”

“Do I even want to know what a runvilar is?” Katie gulped.

“I don’t want to know, so you probably don’t either,” Green said nervously.

“Big, lots of teeth, feeds on waking nightmares,” the Sentinel said easily, as if this was of no great worry. “Lures its prey into wild tides by mocking the calls of friendly creatures.”

Adam didn’t have to physically see the Guardians to know they were all aiming their attention at Black. This must not have been the first time his know-it-all attitude had dropped them into a problem.

“Size order,” the Sentinel chirped, darting around Black to sink his claws into the metal of its hull. “Heaviest first, you’ll get harder for me to pull as you go out farther.”

On screen, Adam could see Keith’s eyes go wide. He gripped his chair as he felt a shaking that they weren’t able to see due to the video stabilizers, as the Black Lion pulled away from the group.

“I’m never listening to him again,” Green muttered, undoubtedly meant only for her own ears. Blue heard it anyway.

“I haven’t listened to him in decaphoebs,” she grumped. “And yet, somehow, I’ve still been pulled into his stupidity.”

It was only another moment before Hunk let out a surprised yelp. Adam watched the Yellow Lion disappear, pulled out of sight by the huge Sentinel as he was hauled away to safety. Adam muted Black’s and Yellow’s comm lines.

“My readouts say that quarks and leptons are becoming terrifyingly few and far between,” he noted. “Are you getting the same conclusions?”

“Yeah,” Katie confirmed. “Wherever the border of this Beyond is, we’re either disturbingly close or we’re passing it. Quintessence levels have been dropping pretty steadily for the last fifteen minutes or so, but at least now I know why.”

“We’ve been getting sucked farther because the power source we’ve been using has been dissipating,” Adam agreed. “We get weaker, tide gets stronger, we move faster.”

“It’s a good thing this Sentinel showed up,” she mused. “If we kept going, we’d all be de—”

Katie’s broadcast cut off suddenly, but Adam heard Green’s shriek of anger and his own visuals were still working. The dark shadow that suddenly latched onto the Green Lion was definitely not the Sentinel, and for a few heartbeats Adam actually found himself frozen in terror.

This thing was beyond anything he had ever even imagined could exist. It was massive, with claws and teeth and what might have passed as eyes just _everywhere_, like remnants of a thousand dead creatures had been pasted together to rot in a heap with no rhyme or reason. Spindly, jerky limbs, something that might have been a fin, maybe it had a tail or maybe that was just another misshapen arm.

Green was abruptly pulled away from him, and Adam acted on instinct. He slammed on his accelerator, trying to focus on anything except the whole, horrifying picture, slashing and biting at whatever strange appendages stood between him and Katie. Blue managed to maneuver through the flailing limbs and latch onto the Green Lion’s tail, and just in time; he felt the sudden jerk as Blue was yanked backward, pulling Green along with her.

His inertia dampeners were functioning so the pull of motion was minor, but Adam could still tell they had been flung away as the view in front of him flipped and spun. He caught a glimpse of the Sentinel releasing them to round on the attacking creature, his wicked claws and sharp teeth rending and tearing.

Adam kept a hold on Green and fired his accelerators at full throttle, locked in on the position of the other two Lions. He could see Hunk’s and Keith’s video feeds, voicelessly asking what was going on, but ignored them to focus on trying to put distance between them and that runvilar or whatever the hell it was. Hopefully, like a rip current, moving across it instead of against it would help get closer to safety.

Blue was in a full on fit, hissing and spitting curses in a few languages Adam knew and several that he didn’t. He could hear Green freaking out and had to deduce from a one-sided conversation that Katie was all right, if a bit shaken, and then both women shrieked in surprise as Blue was suddenly grabbed from above.

Adam was ready to put up a fight, but one of the Sentinel’s huge, black wings came into view; he kept his accelerators going to help them along, until his overlay readouts abruptly changed and there was no longer any outside force putting him in motion. It wasn’t completely silent, but the rush of noise was gone and effectively made him feel like it was. He heaved a sigh of relief and turned his volume back on.

“I think I know what a runvilar is now,” Adam said breathlessly. “And I never, ever want to see one again.”

“Are you guys okay?” Keith demanded. “Pidge’s comm lines are down!”

“I think it did a mass energy drain on the Green Lion or something,” Adam answered as Blue finally released Green’s tail. He maneuvered her around to grip the smaller Lion by the shield on her back, drifting downward. “As soon as it grabbed her, everything on Katie’s side went dead. I think she’s all right, though…hey, am I reading this wrong, or is there gravity here?”

Blue was steadily moving downward still, and Adam’s sensors were picking up solid ground below. And he wasn’t just seeing proof of gravity, a lot of his scanners were bringing back results that coincided with normal, in-universe laws of physics. Visually, he saw the Sentinel flapping his wings to lower himself in front of them, and below them the light of the quintessence field began to dissipate like a fog. Adam lowered Green carefully to the ground next to where Black and Yellow sat, and brought Blue down beside her.

“It’s not just gravity,” Hunk replied. “There’s an oxygen-rich atmosphere here. Did we drop into a reality?”

“No,” the Sentinel sounded pained this time as he gingerly came in to land on the stone ground. “You were just at the point of passing into the Beyond, so I’m not really familiar with what’s out here. This was simply the first patch of safety I saw to start pulling you to.”

“I don’t think it will be safe for long,” Keith replied. “My Lion’s power levels are slowly dropping, and it looks like everyone else’s are too.”

“If we’re just at the point of this Beyond place, then it’s probably the natural drain from higher concentration to lower,” Adam answered. “The quintessence running them is being sapped by the natural flow of the currents out into nothing here.”

“The quintessence levels are pretty low,” Hunk agreed. “They’d still kill us with overexposure, but not for a couple hours. Whatever weird atmosphere this place has, it’s acting just like Earth’s electromagnetic field does with the sun, and keeping the radiation at bay.”

“I’m going out there,” Keith decided.

“Really?” Adam asked, exasperated. “Is the current situation not already enough of a problem for you?”

“The environment out here is harsh, but not fatal,” the Sentinel answered. “Which is very strange. I think you probably could come out of your ships for a bit. I wouldn’t advise it, there are still dangerous things here, but it’s possible.”

Keith was already out of his cockpit, and Adam gave into the urge to slam his head lightly on his own side console. _Of course_ they had to leave the ships to check this out if they could, they couldn’t just leave a discovery like this uninvestigated, but he could have at least put a little more preparation into it.

“I’m going out too,” he grunted to Hunk, who let out a little whine even as he slowly rose from his own seat.

Adam grabbed his helmet as he left his cockpit, banging lightly on the wall as he turned toward the airlock.

“Heads up, babe, I’m going for a little walk,” he called.

As he rounded the corner and jumped down into the Blue Lion’s mouth, he slammed into something very solid that sent him bouncing back a bit. As he scampered to catch his balance, he found Blue standing in front of him just as she had been in the astral plane. This time, instead of the wooden armor she’d been wearing, she had on torn up jeans and a crop top that hung off one shoulder. She was also lacking the distinct, dreamlike quality of the astral plane, and appeared far more undeniably real.

“I’m coming along,” she answered, hands on her hips. “This place shouldn’t exist, we need to know what it is.”

Adam looked her up and down. He stretched out a foot, lightly kicking her shin to test her solidity. She rolled her eyes and tossed an arm around his shoulders, pulling him into a headlock and hauling him down out of the ship’s open mouth.

When she let him go and he straightened up, Adam found that she wasn’t the only Guardian who’d joined them. Black stood with Keith, and Yellow was already here as Hunk padded over to join them. Green appeared a moment later, just a second or two before Katie forced an airlock open manually to climb down her dead Lion’s side.

“This is so cool,” Katie was practically beaming as she ran over. “There are two different planes of existence meeting at a single point, can you believe it? Things from the quintessence field and things from the realities can both physically exist here, on the same wavelength!”

“You just almost got eaten by a Stephen King fever dream,” Adam reminded her. “Could you at least act a little bit unnerved and stop making me look like a wuss in comparison?”

“Oh, I almost wet my pants back there!” Katie admitted, her zeal not dampened in the slightest. “But this more than makes up for it!”

Towering over them, the Sentinel moved. It took a few steps forward, shrinking down to a height about equal to the four Guardians. Humanoid, just like them, with the same pointed ears and tall stature. He wore what looked like well-worn, sleeveless riding leathers, his skin tanned brown as if from hours a day in the sun, several carved wood and glass beads decorating a single small braid separated out from his long black hair. It was the only real splash of color, a rainbow of pastels bound up with a metal medallion, perhaps a decoration with a cultural significance.

Adam didn’t know how to place ages, but he thought this one might look just a touch younger than the Guardians. His not-unpleasant face was scrunched up in a grimace, and he limped as he made his way over to them with a hand pressed to his side.

“Oh!” Green was the first to realize what that meant, immediately starting to tear a strip from the hem of the sundress she wore. “You’re hurt! Is it bad?”

The Sentinel accepted the fabric with a small, appreciative smile and pressed it where his hand was, against what Adam could now see was a jaggedly torn hole in his vest. There was a strange, light blue fluid soaking his fingers, perhaps what passed for blood for his kind.

“It’s deep,” he admitted. “Those things have too many arms to keep track of all of them at once.”

“You’re an Onyx,” Black observed, making a face. “How does an Onyx get hurt in a fight against a creature that uses no magic?”

“Do you always sound like a stuck-up braggart, or are you just feeling snide today?” The Onyx asked. “The quintessence field is thin near the Beyond, that makes us weaker and things like Formless stronger. At least I had physical fighting skills to fall back on at all, you strike me as somebody who would have died.”

“Will that thing be able to follow us here?” Adam asked. “If we can all exist here at once, that means things like that can too, right?”

“Right,” the Onyx replied. “Which was why I said there are still dangerous things here.”

“Okay, quick regroup,” Keith stepped up, looking around at them all to size them up. Adam finally noticed that the four Guardians looked just as beaten up and tired as the rest of them. “First things first…do you have a name?”

“Me?” The Onyx asked. “No. Nobody in the quintessence field has a name. It’s not really in our practices.”

“So you’re name isn’t actually Blue?” Adam asked, looking up at her.

“No,” she answered, raising an eyebrow. “Did you think we were all just coincidentally named at birth after our pelt color or something?”

“Huh.”

“Black says you’re an Onyx,” Keith frowned, either not noticing or not caring about their exchange. “So, do we just…call you Onyx? Is that okay?”

“It’s what most mortals who are stuck talking to tend to call me, sure.”

For a man who looked like he was slowly bleeding out, Onyx didn’t seem particularly perturbed by this series of events. Adam could only imagine what kind of crazy bullshit he went through on a given day that none of this was even mildly exciting.

“You said you saw Allura and Red?” Keith pressed on. “That they were with a Gold and his friend? What happened?”

“I don’t know for certain,” Onyx admitted. “We sensed you coming through and going the wrong way, and I left before their little meeting ended. The Gold was chatting with some of his colleagues and the half-Iron looked pretty bad. The pilots and the Guardian weren’t really involved in the talk.”

“But they’re all right?” Keith asked.

“The pilots? Yes. The two Reaper hosts? Hm.”

He made a face that said those results weren’t promising. Adam felt a pang of sadness but knew this wasn’t the time, pushing it down to focus on the problem at hand.

“The Golds, I don’t suppose they seemed overly interested in helping us save our universe?” Adam asked.

“Oh, no, they’re very interested,” Onyx answered, which caught everyone by surprise. “There’s some pretty messed up stuff going down over there. I promise, you barely know the half of it. After their meeting they’ll probably return your pilots to the other side and then decide what they want to do from there.”

“Would they be interested in meeting with us?” Hunk asked. “I mean, that’s partly why we’re here. We came to find our friends, but also to see if we could form some kind of alliance.”

“They won’t talk to you here,” Onyx answered, shaking his head slightly. “They’ll decide what they want to do, then send a representative to you. But luckily for you, Reapers work faster than Guardians. No offense.”

The words clearly did cause offense, but Onyx was either very good at pretending not to notice things or he really was too tied up in their present predicament to note that they were insulted. He nodded back behind him, a bit to the right.

“There’s a path there.”

Katie bound past him, far too enthusiastic for Adam’s taste. She beat them all to a place where the mist of light was mostly lifted, absently kicking at the ground there.

“These are laid stones,” she pointed out. “Like cobblestone roads, almost. But it’s been a long time since anyone walked on them or repaired them…some of the stones are missing and a lot are worn and broken. And look, I think this used to be a sign post.”

As she said, Adam knelt down and found the remains of some kind of pole buried in the ground. He also found something else of interest.

“This vine is alive,” he pointed out, lifting one of the strands that had wrapped itself around the broken pole base. “You can only see it so far though…I’m guessing this means we’d find a lot of interesting things past the edge of the mist.”

He looked back at Keith, who was standing with his arms crossed and a frown on his face. Keith looked around at everyone else.

“I think we can all agree that this whole place is a mystery, since none of the people actually from the quintessence field seem to think it should exist,” he said carefully. “And maybe it shouldn’t…if Onyx’s assessment is right, if we keep walking in that direction we’re going to pass the boundary into the this Beyond place, and nothing is supposed to be out there. It’s the kind of thing that you only get to investigate once in a lifetime.”

He paused, taking a tired breath.

“But it’s also dangerous,” he added. “We’re all exhausted, Onyx is hurt, we’re so far out away from the rift gate that we could be stranded here if the Lions lose enough power. We’re at a point right now where whatever choice is made could literally be a matter of life and death. So right now, I’m not going to give any orders. I think everyone should decide for themselves whether to go on, or to go back. No one person has to go along with the rest of the group.”

Everyone was silent for a moment, until Hunk was the first one to speak up.

“I want to go back,” he said apologetically. “I get how important this is, and I know we’ve done dangerous stuff with no backup before, but this is really serious. I don’t think I can be any use here knowing the whole time that we could be trapped here with nobody knowing where we are.”

“I want to go back too,” Adam blurted out the words before he really had a chance to think the through and stop them from coming out. Everyone looked surprise that he might make that decision, and he had to admit that he was a little surprised at himself too. “I’m sorry. I know I should stay here and watch your backs if you go on, but I can’t. This is just way too much, I can’t do it. I’d be more in the way than anyth—”

“It’s okay,” Keith cut him off gently. “Really. You’ve been through a lot, this is the limit. I get it. And honestly, I’m a lot more comfortable if it’s at least two people going back together than I would be just sending one. Anyone else?”

“I’m going ahead,” Katie declared. “I have to see what’s past this, there’s no way I’ll ever get to make these kinds of discoveries outside of our own universe again. But maybe Onyx should hitch a ride out of here and get somewhere a little safer.”

“I’m not going to let anyone go wandering out into the Beyond alone,” Onyx scoffed. “And besides that, I’ve spent the last couple million years looking for any clues to the whereabouts of the gods, there’s no way I can walk away from what was obviously some kind of intelligent settlement past the edge of existence.”

“Okay,” Keith breathed, looking around at the circle again. “Pidge and I are going. Onyx is going. I can already tell Black is going, he’d probably be gone if he didn’t have to wait for us.”

Black gave the barest roll of his eyes, and for a moment Adam regretted his decision to leave. He did not feel this Guardian was trustworthy, especially not since he knew Takashi shared his feelings on the matter. But it was too late now.

“Hunk, Adam, you guys go back to the rift gate, let everyone know what’s going on. Mark any coordinates you can so this place isn’t completely lost…I know it might be difficult to come find us if we don’t come back, but at least there will be a starting point. Green? I’m assuming you’re sticking with Pidge?”

“Yes.”

“Yellow? Blue?”

“Going with Adam and Hunk,” Blue answered. “Don’t worry about it being hard to come back, White will know better how to get here than us. And if all else fails, we’ll reach out to the Reapers somehow.”

“Okay,” Keith nodded, their plan finalized. “Stick together, be careful. Send a message to us when you reach the rift gate, we may not be able to receive it but you never know.”

Adam still wasn’t entirely comfortable leaving Keith and Katie in the middle of the quintessence field, especially not at a point where existence literally ended, but their lives were no longer normal in any sense of the word. He knew he was doing the right thing, going back to make sure others could find their way here in case the explorers they left behind became stranded, but the right thing wasn’t always the easy thing.

“You guys be careful too,” he requested, heading back toward the Blue Lion. “And same to you…if trouble starts, send a message. We won’t know how far apart we can be and still receive unless we try.”

Keith and Katie both drew their bayards, and Black and Green drew their weapons. Onyx looked at them all as if this was a quaint little bit of behavior, then the group of five moved in closer and started along the old, broken road.

Adam and Hunk watched them until they were out of sight, listening for any signs of distress just beyond the mist, but nothing came. Finally, they boarded their ships.

“Power’s down by five percent just in that time we were talking,” Adam noted as he started up his Lion.

“Same here,” Hunk confirmed. “I feel bad about going, but the sooner we do the better. The Green Lion is already dead and there’s no way she’s recharging anytime soon in a power sink. Black may not be far behind if they’re here for too long…we need to go find a way to recharge the Lions in an environment like this.”

“Agreed,” Adam nodded as they slowly took off. “Stick close and keep your eyes open, and make sure every mapping program you have is open. We need to document exactly how to do here and we need to do it safely…that runvilar’s still out there, and maybe other things even scarier than that.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Keith called the group to a halt about five seconds down the old stone road. There was little doubt as they were walking that Pidge was correct, this thing was man-made and in no way a natural phenomenon. As they walked the quintessence grew thinner, and with it the hazy, misty light it gave off. Now Keith made everyone stop as a stone arch loomed up into view up ahead.

“Does this look familiar to anyone?” He asked, looking from the Guardians to the Sentinel that accompanied them.

Never in a million years would he ever have guessed that he would be walking past the boundaries of existence in the company of a fellow reincarnated, interstellar soldier and several higher beings from a realm beyond his universe. This was the kind of fantasy stuff that happened in books and movies, and if he suddenly woke up to find he had been badly wounded in the earlier battle and this was all just a fever dream he would readily accept that excuse.

But right now it all seemed very real, as improbable and almost impossible as it was.

“Specifically? No,” Onyx replied. “But the marks on that arch are Quintessi. It says “In all things, balance.” That’s the motto on the crest of the three gods.”

“What are these gods?” Pidge asked curiously. “You mentioned them back at the landing site too. Is it the religion of the Quintessi races?”

“No, we don’t have a religion, it’s a history,” Onyx answered. “The three gods are a fact, not a belief. You see, unlike mortals, we don’t see our gods as being infallible, unknowable higher powers…we understand that they’re most likely just higher beings from another place that we’re not evolved enough yet to fully understand.”

“What’s the difference?” Keith wondered. That sounded an awful lot like being unknowable to him.

“Well, your friends analogy, about each universe being an egg,” Onyx answered. “With the water in the bowl being the quintessence field. We Ascended theorize that there are also many bowls stacked in an even bigger vessel, that’s filled with an even larger, more powerful energy source. Perhaps there are even many of those bigger vessels piled into an ocean, and many oceans in a solar system, and many systems in a larger universe…the levels can potentially go on indefinitely. Basically, perhaps the quintessence field as a whole is our universe, and there are other universes like ours out there, and the gods come from a place beyond these.”

“So you think of them more like aliens than gods?” Pidge guessed. “Just other, stronger beings, but not like…inexplicably magical?”

“Exactly,” Onyx said. “We may not understand everything that they can do, but we believe they’re gods to us the same way you’re gods to ants. Perhaps representatives of a whole civilization all their own, settled here in our little corner of existence. The basic lore is that once there was nothing. This is open to interpretation…it could mean that there was simply nothing here, but the consensus of most is that there is an entity called Nothing that consumes everything. The difference between a span of nothing and a dead universe is that at least the dead universe has the potential to bring forth new life in a new cycle, while a span of nothing is…nothing, ever.

“Then came the three gods. Some stories say they were born from Nothing, but it’s pretty much agreed upon that this is just poetry and artistic license. The more likely scenario is that the three gods came from a species who either had their own home consumed and destroyed by Nothing, or who were explorers who set out from their home and found Nothing consuming existence. Either way, they banded together and they locked this entity away, allowing the natural course of life to continue and universes once again begin to spread into places where they had been eradicated.

“The three gods settled here, in this cluster millions of universes, enveloped in this particular sea of quintessence. They each created a child race…the Goddess’ Guardians, the God’s Reapers, and the Mage’s Sentinels. In mortal mythology it would be said these races sprang forth magically, but it’s generally accepted that we were born to their specifications using their advanced technology. Life in the universes was created the same way…they used their technology to move quintessence from the immaterial realm to the physical, where it began to pool into cores and become individual souls.”

“But why?” Pidge asked critically.

“Why what?”

“Why make life in the universes?” She clarified. “Your gods clearly don’t interact with us, so why create us? What’s the point? They already have the Quintessi races, and it’s obvious they aren’t looking for us to worship them since I’ve never heard of any religion describing anything like them.”

Onyx frowned. He looked thoughtful for a minute, then shrugged.

“I’ve honestly never considered that question,” he admitted. “But you’re right. The gods have been known to interact with us, but not with you. And, generally speaking, we don’t often interact with you either. So…I can’t say I really know what your purpose is.”

“You know, this really is a good question,” Green came over to stand near the arch with them. “All the different environments in the quintessence field, why bother with life in the realities? Why create the dynamics that allow a Quintessi and a mortal to bond into a single being? That it happens so seamlessly, with no great loss of either individual…that must be by design rather than chance.”

“Well, sort of,” Onyx supposed. “It’s not really as effortless as you might assume. Anybody can’t just go bonding with anybody, they have to resonate well with each other. But, I would say that the fact that so many do find their way across millions of universes to one of the few others who resonate with them so well does probably indicate that bonding is a feature rather than a bug.”

“Soulmates,” Keith commented absently.

Everybody looked at him, and he felt himself flush a little.

“I mean, that’s kind of what you make it sound like,” he backpedaled. “Two parts gravitating toward each other until they form the whole. Nothing gets erased because the two halves go together to make a whole.”

After a moment, Onyx smiled.

“It does sound a little bit like that, doesn’t it?” He allowed. “Soulmates. I like that, it makes it sound so much nicer.”

“Are you all done?” Black asked impatiently, interrupting the feel-good conversation and immediately bringing the mood down. “What do some random nursery stories have to do with this arch?”

“You don’t listen very well, do you?” Onyx asked, not bothering to look away from Keith at him. Blue wasn’t around to give Black an earful, but clearly Onyx was perfectly happy to fill her role. “Is that why you failed your Ascension? You’re too stupid to learn?”

_That_ made Black angry. Keith could feel it roiling under the surface, and even if he didn’t really know what Ascension was he could tell it was a sore spot.

And honestly, Keith was having trouble feeling sympathy. They had meshed so well in the beginning, but lately it felt like Black had gotten whatever it was he’d wanted and was only hanging around to see if there was anything else, not like he cared.

Well, he _cared_. Keith could still feel that much. But it was more like a parent caring about their kid’s dog…it was important in a way, but there were other things that were much more so.

“He just said these things were facts,” Keith pointed out. “And that the motto on the arch is from the crest of these gods, who might possibly be higher entities from a different plane.”

Black glared at him, irritated that now Keith was turning on him. But whatever single track Black’s mind was on these days, it was dulling his ability to follow anything else.

“This arch is literally located outside of existence?” Keith pointed out. “In exactly the kind of place you’d expect higher beings from another plane to live? Come on, it may as well say “welcome to our house!”

“He’s not worried about the gods, because he thinks the gods are gone,” Onyx said, crossing his arms. “Which makes them useless to him. Except the gods aren’t gone, and he should know as well as anyone since you all have traces of being judged by the Mage.”

“The Mage?” Green repeated. “The Mage of Chaos? That’s not possible, we’ve never been in the presence of any gods.”

“Of course you have,” now Onyx looked confused. He pointed to Keith with his thumb. “This one even has their mark, so they can find him again. You don’t somehow get chosen if you’re not in their presence.”

Keith looked at the others, but they were all just as lost as him, Onyx gave a soft whistle.

“You all really don’t know, do you?” He asked. “Here. Look.”

He held out the hand that wasn’t stained with blood, tossing up what seemed at first to be nothing only to have a shower of glimmering aqua-colored sparks rain down over the group. As everyone instinctively looked up they came to rest on their faces, disappearing except where they felt like they stuck in spots on everyone’s foreheads. The result was a variety of shimmering words, each of them wearing a label that had been invisible.

“Oh no,” Keith groaned, staring at the letters on Pidge’s forehead. “No. No way. That cannot be this god you’re talking about.”

“No, it definitely is,” Onyx insisted. “They’ve been in your universe for a little while, now. In fact, I only just managed to track them down to finally speak to them. I had to wait for them to finish helping a White Guardian freeze time and create a dimensional pocket on that planet your female pilots were fighting on before I could talk to them.”

Keith looked at Pidge again, and could tell they both had the same nauseous feeling.

“Freezing time,” Pidge said.

“Creating dimensional pockets,” Keith replied.

“Judging people.”

“Inter-dimensional being.”

“Your forehead says “garfle,” Pidge sighed.

“Yours says “warfle.”

“Bob,” they both groaned in unison.

“Sure,” Onyx supposed. “That sounds like something they’d go by. I think a few universes ago it was Slug.”

Now this definitely couldn’t be happening. It was simply too absurd, there was no way he could accept it. Keith would rather have continued believing that all the Paladins had shared the same brief space madness and had the same hallucination than believe that somebody like Bob was real.

“Green says “warfle” too,” Pidge noted.

“Everyone’s did,” Onyx answered. “Except your friend in purple, he’s never been judged by the Mage.”

“How did you guys get judged?” Pidge wondered, looking up at Green. She looked a bit sheepish.

“We were pulled into a dimensional pocket and forced to play a weird game show,” she answered. “It was quite ridiculous, Blue tried to get the assistant host’s phone number and Red tried to choke an opponent. When it was over we all just agreed never to speak of it again, we didn’t know you were going through the same thing. Now that I think about it, I suppose it does make sense that the guy was a god of chaos.”

“So why does Black say “snick?” Pidge asked.

“None of those words say any of the noises you’re making,” Onyx said firmly. “I don’t know where you got those translations. The letters are old runes, they translate to “kagi,” “sarti,” and “tver.” The tall one’s is a mark that basically means a person is chosen. The others can roughly be said to mean “pass,” and the Black one’s means “fail.”

“Well, when you’re the only one to vote for himself when it comes to deciding who should get to leave…” Green murmured, trailing off quietly.

“Forget all of that,” Keith demanded, motioning for Green to be quiet. He looked to Onyx and pointed to his forehead, where the word was beginning to fade from view again. “What does this mean?”

“It can mean everything, or it can mean nothing,” Onyx shrugged. “It’s just a marker. You did something the Mage found to be an impressive show of good character, and they judged you to be worthy of their attention. It helps them track you down again in the future if they want to find you. But it’s also a two way street…it gives you the privilege of contacting them as well. But I’ve had the same mark since I was pretty young so I’ll warn you now, sometimes the Mage is…very slow to answer.”

He stepped away from them and moved through the arch, stopping just on the other side.

“There’s a bridge here,” he called back.

Keith looked at Pidge, who looked just as flustered as he felt. Unfortunately, this was no time to revisit that particular piece of shared trauma, not right now.

He followed Onyx, with Pidge trailing along with him. There was indeed a bridge just through the arch, though what might lay below as impossible to tell through the swirling sea of fog.

Onyx went first, carefully testing each plank before putting his full weight on it. Everything was solid and strong, as if it had only been built recently despite the overgrowth that said nobody had been through here in decades, maybe centuries. Maybe even more. Across the bridge he could see open sky, gray and dark and full of clouds, but the ground fell away in some kind of incline on the other side and he couldn’t tell what they were up against.

There was no more mist on the other side of the bridge. Keith’s readings said that the quintessence radiation was still at dangerous levels if one were exposed long-term, but it was low enough that even if they had been here for two or three days they still wouldn’t have built up a lethal dose. And as they reached the place where the ground fell away, and were finally able to see into the distance…

“Oh…my…God,” Pidge breathed beside him, voicing the words that Keith could only think.

Down below was a city, the faint glints in the low light belying what once must have shone like a jewel. Three elegant spires were laid out at points on its edge, with a single, faceted crystal standing tall at its center like a naturally-grown tower.

It was beautiful, and it was terrifying. Dark and filled with writhing, moving shadows that most certainly were alive, things that stalked the once-living streets that were now bathed in an everlasting gloom, emboldened by the darkness. Onyx quickly threw himself to the side, flattening himself on the ground, and pulled Keith along with him. Keith, in turn, grabbed Pidge, and Green and Black crouched down as well.

“Formless,” Green said darkly.

“And worse,” Onyx agreed. “And I think it’s safe to say they didn’t build this city.”

“There can’t be anyone left alive down there who might have,” Pidge whispered. “Look at all those overgrown vines…this place has been abandoned for a long time.”

“The question is whether they lived to get away, or if this place is their grave,” Black murmured.

“Really pleasant thought there,” Keith hissed. “Thanks.”

“This place isn’t safe,” Onyx murmured. “We’ve seen what’s here, we should go.”

“Okay, just let me get some quick recordings,” Pidge requested, army-crawling forward a little so she could get what was below in view with the camera at her wrist.

“Wait, you want to just leave?” Black asked in disbelief. “After all that talk about needing to see what could possibly be beyond the boundary of existence, you want to turn tail and run because of a few Formless?”

“A few?” Onyx scoffed. “That place is crawling with them, you can see them all moving from here. Did you not hear what I said earlier? They’re strong here, we’re weak. Even if we weren’t outnumbered, we’re outgunned.”

“Just a second ago there was poetic babbling that this could be the home of the gods,” Black returned. “What if they aren’t sleeping in the temples like people claim? What if they’re sleeping in those spires?”

“Then we’d better come back with an army if we’re going to check, because there’s no way we’re getting through that,” Green pointed out. “And if they’re in there and asleep, it’s not like they can help us.”

“Those spires mean something,” Black hissed. “Something important. And that tower…nobody builds a tower like that without something powerful to protect.”

“Are you trying to _relic hunt_?” Onyx demanded. “Listen buddy, we are past the border of the quintessence field. There are so many things out here that are so much worse than Formless, and just because you don’t see them out in the open doesn’t mean they’re not slithering through the buildings down there.”

“Are you telling me that you’re scared?” Black asked. “What kind of Onyx are you? Even weakened by the lack of quintessence here, your skill with magic should still be great enough to outwit a bunch of mindless shadows. Unless you already know what’s in that tower and simply don’t want to share that knowledge. It’s well known that Sentinels like to hoard things, I’m sure power isn’t exempt.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Onyx asked, bewildered. “You really believe this is all some kind of sham to keep you from finding something big here. Look, I have no clue what’s down there, and you couldn’t get me to go check if you promised me all of the power in existence. But you can feel free to go.”

As he talked, Keith felt him snake an arm over his back. A quick glance to the side told him that Onyx was carefully reaching for Green, tensing in preparation to pull her away from Black. He felt his nerves go taut as his gut told him something was wrong, and ever so slowly turned his head to try and get a look at the Black Guardian.

There was a look in his eye that Keith had seen once before, in Lotor’s fit of madness during the fight in the quintessence field. The paranoia was clear on his face, a long build up that was now beginning to overflow, millennia of slowly building pressure finally coming to a head as he snapped.

Keith realized, belatedly, that he could no longer feel what Black was feeling. He had been cut off completely, and that was another huge red flag.

Onyx caught Green by the belt of her sundress and pulled her slowly away from Black. When he did, Keith reached forward to grab Pidge’s ankle, pulling her back to the group. Keith and Onyx got up quickly, pulling the girls along with them, and backed up to put some space between them.

“We’re going,” Onyx declared, moving to step in front of the other three. “You can stay here if you want. Hell, you can go down there if you want. Best of luck to you.”

Keith took a few steps back, pulling Green and Pidge along with them. He spun them around so he was behind them, pushing them back toward the bridge.

“Sorry,” he heard Black say darkly. “But I can’t let you take something I need.”

Keith turned just in time to see Black turn his sword on Onyx, taking a swing that made the Sentinel duck out of the way. While he was down Black rammed a foot into his injured side, driving him completely down to the ground. Keith darted forward and started to kneel at his side, but he suddenly found himself being hauled away.

Black had a hold on the collar of his armor, and had better leverage due to his firmer stance. He pulled Keith around, throwing him to the ground and sending him over the edge of the incline. It was steep, enough that Keith found himself airborne several times, dizzy as the world spun out of control.

When he came to a stop he froze, too scared even to breathe as he found himself only a few yards away from a lumbering black shape. It was so dark it swallowed the light and didn’t seem to have any solid shape, constantly shifting from something with legs to something snake-like, to scales, to fur, to nothing but claws and teeth. Behind him he heard the fall of small pebbles as someone did a more controlled slide down the embankment, the noise calling the thing’s attention to him.

“Shit,” Keith breathed, scurrying up onto all fours and trying to back quickly away. “No, no, no, don’t look over here!”

His retreat was stopped as a booted foot slammed into his back, forcing him back to the ground.

“I’m sorry about this,” Black said, his voice higher and more shrill than usual, tinged with a complete lack of reason. “I truly am. If there were any other way I wouldn’t have to do this, but I’ve already tried everything else. Real power requires real sacrifice.”

Keith had been stabbed before. Non-lethal injuries usually, pure luck had kept his arteries and organs intact while his armor and muscle had taken the brunt of most cases. But Black knew exactly where to put his sword, and Keith knew as soon as he felt the pain that this time was different. The blade went through his back, a shooting agony under his ribs, piercing through and effectively pinning him to the ground.

His ears were ringing but he was sure he heard Pidge screaming his name. But she was so distant, all Keith was aware of was the tortuous pain and the sight of Black walking away from him. He moved toward the Formless that was sizing them up from nearby, quickly joined by several more that were milling around. Keith was struck with a sudden, overwhelming fear, a knowledge that when those things attacked he was stuck here, injured, unable to move and completely at their mercy.

They lunged at Black, who was now without his weapon, and Keith expected him to fall. But he didn’t; instead there was a sharp flash as he gathered a ball of light in his hands, eliciting pained shrieks and squeals from the creatures that were too close. The air smelled of something burnt, not quite flesh but maybe something close to it. Keith lost track of what was going on, between the light and the noise and the pain.

Something jarred him, making him cry out, but a hand over his mouth muffled the noise. There was another flash of searing pain and then he was pulled to his feet, somebody else supporting most of his weight and practically dragging him along.

And the sword was still there.

The last bit of his brain that knew logic said that was probably a good thing. You weren’t supposed to pull things out of stab wounds, that was how a person bled out. But God, the fact that it had to still be in there was painful.

When the sparks died from his eyes he could vaguely make out some steps leading up to the top of the incline. There were so many, it was so steep, he just knew he wasn’t going to make it. Even if there hadn’t been a sword blade sticking out of his middle, in his exhausted state he never would have been able to make the climb.

He was dropped to his knees abruptly and a larger body wrapped around him. Onyx, he realized, shielding him from a sudden onslaught of heat that brought with it agonized screams and wails. It was like something out of a horror movie, sounds that Keith knew would haunt his nightmares for years.

When the noise died down, Keith and Onyx both dared to look up. Nearby, Black still stood, now surrounded by the smoking, charred remains of the creatures who had dared to attack. His long hair, previously black, was now a shimmering, pearl white, and his skin was a few shades paler than it had been.

But when he turned around, that glint of madness was still there. And it was all the more evident when Black laughed, a sound that was almost more of a desperate, breathless giggle.

“This is what Ascension is,” he said to Onyx, holding out his palms for the other Quintessi to see. Sparks danced across his fingers, along with small tongues of flame and droplets of water, pebbles and dust orbiting his hands like small moons. “This is what power is for. To crush enemies and wipe the world clean, not to hide in the shadows in fear. All of you with your books and philosophy and constant talking, too afraid to step up and act. We don’t need these pathetic gods to have pity on us and finally come crawling out of their holes, I’ll show you what real power can do.”

“You need to calm down,” Onyx advised, still shielding Keith with his own body, his voice remarkably calm and even under the circumstances. “This isn’t real power, and this isn’t the kind of sacrifice that brings real power.”

“Do you really think I’m going to listen to you?” Black asked, borderline hysterical. “Every one of you, it doesn’t matter if it was White or the Gold or you, an Onyx, you’re all the same! Lip service, pretense, pointless drivel about working hard and studying more, all so you wouldn’t have someone like me step up and outshine you all!”

Something was wrong. Even through the haze of pain, Keith could hear it in his voice and see it in his mannerisms. His movements were becoming more and more jerky, almost uncontrolled, and thin veins of black were beginning to run across his pale skin.

“What’s going on?” Keith mumbled, his voice thick, as if his mouth didn’t want to obey his brain. “What’s happening to him?”

“Something bad,” Onyx murmured through clenched teeth. “Something he’s probably been warned about a thousand times but didn’t want to hear about.”

“I don’t need any of you anymore!” Black was outright screaming now, only serving to help the other Formless nearby pinpoint exactly where they needed to go to see what was going on. His pale eyes began to darken, the pearly hair beginning to turn black and writhe as if it were alive itself.

He ranted, frantic and without regard for anything going on around him, barely pausing to breathe. But Keith couldn’t pay any attention to his words, because what he saw had his full attention.

The elegant features quickly became almost unrecognizable, Black’s mouth falling open as if melting to allow to rows of jagged, needle-like teeth to protrude. His eyes sunk inward, collapsing into his skull, and his body began to contort and change.

_He’s turning into one of them_, Keith realized with dread. _Whatever he did, it’s eating him from the inside._

“Go,” Onyx whispered, giving him a shove. “Come on, go. Run!”

Keith tried. He made it two steps and then he went down, biting back a cry as the sword was pushed around again. Behind him he could hear Onyx blocking Black’s advance, taking on the newly born Formless in spite of the risk that this place would lend Black even greater strength now with his fall from grace.

He couldn’t get up. He just couldn’t. It wasn’t even a matter of willpower anymore, not even the strongest spirit in the universe could make his body move. He was physically at the end of his strength.

A deafening roar split the air as the Black Lion suddenly appeared overhead, slamming down in the small clearing of decimated Formless so hard the ground must have shaken for miles. Keith watched blearily as the ship’s mouth opened and Pidge bound out, sprinting over to him with Green in tow. The two young women hauled him to his feet, half-dragging him into the safety of the Lion’s hold where they were forced to momentarily abandon him.

“Go! GO!” He heard Green scream a moment later, followed by Pidge running past him to the cockpit. He felt the vibrations as the ship rose, and from where he lay on his side he saw Green struggling into the hold with a barely-conscious Onyx. The petite Quintessi was having a world of trouble, but eventually she managed to lay him out and give him a quick look.

The Black Lion evened out, probably coming to a stop. Pidge reappeared, coming to hover over Keith as Green moved to his side.

“What should I do?” Pidge asked, trying not to panic. “I don’t think we have the first aid supplies for this!”

“Stay calm,” Green advised. “I may be weaker here, but I’m not completely powerless. And we’re still in a place outside of a reality, I can actually do something about this. Keith?”

“Yeah?” Keith croaked.

“I’m really, really sorry!” She said apologetically.

Without any further warning, Green yanked the sword out of his back. Keith had thought he was in pain before, but now? This was pure hell. The next thing he knew, Pidge was trying to pin him down by the shoulders while Green was pressing hard against his abdomen, putting pressure on an injured body while he begged for her to stop.

He didn’t know how many minutes passed before the pain finally started to fade, but it was like a drowning man suddenly breaking the surface and getting air. He began to regain some of his senses and realize he needed to stop fighting, that Pidge and Green were trying to help. Soon, the pain ebbed away entirely and the soft glow from Green’s hands faded as she sat back on her heals.

Keith took a deep breath and slowly sat up, touching his stomach. There was still pain there, an indescribable ache that made him wince, but the flesh once again felt whole.

“It’s not perfect,” Green apologized. “There was a poison in Black that seeped into his sword, I can’t clean that out of you. I don’t know if it ever can be fully cleansed, to be honest, but we’ll keep trying to find a way.”

Keith pulled completely away from Pidge and carefully got to his feet. His fatigue was still there, and so was that strange ache, but everything else was in order. But that wasn’t even the half of it.

As he looked around at the hold, he felt lost. Dazed. His body was still overwhelmed with the fading burst of adrenaline, his limbs still shaking faintly with residual fear. Only a short time ago he had been lying on the ground with death—or worse—more than imminent, but at the moment he was once again safe. The sudden shift from one state to the other brought him crashing down emotionally, and he understood now more than ever how Adam or Shiro must occasionally feel.

That was it, he was done. Keith couldn’t handle anything more today, he felt like he was going to shut down at any minute. In defense, he turned off any thoughts about himself completely and turned robotically to the situation at hand.

“What about him?” He asked, his voice alien to his own ears as he nodded down at Onyx. “Will he be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Green admitted. “He was already hurt by that creature, and Black only did more damage. I don’t think there’s anything I can do for him, we need to get him to White.”

“What about one of those Golds?” Keith asked. “They’d be closer, right? In the quintessence field.”

“Reapers and Sentinels can’t heal,” Green said. “That’s a gift only Guardians have. Reapers have camouflage, Guardians can heal, Sentinels are able to exist in the physical planes without an avatar. Each race has its own special gift, which is why we need to get him to White.”

Keith nodded numbly and started toward his cockpit. He stopped, looking back at the two girls.

“Pidge?” He called, nodding back toward the pilot seat. “I think maybe you should drive. Black’s not in this ship anymore, I’m going to guess Green’s taking over for now.”

“If that’s okay…?” Green asked hesitantly.

“Yeah,” Keith said hollowly. “Yeah, it’s fine. I mean, the Green Lion is dead in the water right now, right? You may as well.”

Pidge got up from the floor and came over, reaching up to squeeze his shoulder. He could see in her face she was worried but that she didn’t know what to say, and they both knew right now wasn’t the time for it anyway. She went into the cockpit and dropped down into the pilot seat, and Keith moved to lean against the side console.

She was bigger now, taller. He hadn’t really looked at her too closely over the last year or so, but Pidge was almost eighteen, almost a legal adult. She was filling out, working out to pack on the muscle and become a real soldier instead of just “the nerd,” and had come a long way since the day they’d all competed to take over the Black Lion in Shiro’s absence.

Her feet reached the pedals now, for one thing.

Keith could see now on the viewscreen that they were hovering above the spot where they’d initially landed. It seemed to be safe here for the moment, but that probably wouldn’t last as more formless spilled out into this area. Down below sat the Green Lion, powerless and empty, but Pidge was hesitating in grabbing it.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure about this,” Pidge admitted. “Black is in there.”

“In where? In the Green Lion?”

“Yes,” Green came to join them, looking down at her beloved ship. “I was able to wrestle control of the Black Lion from him while he was distracted, so we could come and save you. But that meant my hold on the Green Lion was weak, and no matter what he may have turned into now he’s still conscious of the Lions as avatars. I hate to say it, but he’ll have to be cleansed from that ship before anyone even thinks of boarding it.”

“Great,” Keith whispered. “Green Lion is haunted by the demented ghost of the Black Lion. This is really our day.”

Green lightly touched Pidge’s shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“It’s safe,” she assured her. “He wouldn’t need contact to take this ship over anyway, if he was able to take it back from me he would do it from a distance. But he’s not. Let’s grab it and get out of here, before this whole area is thick with Formless.”

Pidge nodded, and the Black Lion dipped down to dig its claws into the Green Lion’s hull. As they lifted off again Keith glanced at the readouts, noting that their power levels were down to less than a third.

“This ship will charge once we’re away from this place and back into the normal rift, right?” Keith asked Green. “Will the other ship charge too?”

“No,” Green shook her head. “The ships are built to charge through someone else. In the rift, they charge through us. In the realities, they charge through the pilots. Black is…no longer a Guardian. I will charge this ship, but he can’t filter quintessence from the rift into the Green Lion.”

“Okay,” Keith nodded a little, letting himself sink down to lean more fully on the console. “Then let’s get out of here.”

“A broadcast came through from Adam and Hunk while we were out there,” Pidge replied, hitting the accelerator. “I’ve locked on and I have exact coordinates for where we need to go. Next stop…hopefully a shower.”

“Yeah,” Keith said dully, dropping his gaze tiredly down to the floor. He wished he could turn off his brain, forget what had happened over the last hour and live the rest of his life without the memory. “A nice, hot shower. I’m sure that will fix everything.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning for an eye injury toward the middle and end of the chapter. Again, nothing terribly graphic, no torture or extensive suffering, but I know that grosses some people out!
> 
> \----
> 
> Big fights are over, time to slowly move on to some fluffier times.

Quiet music. A warm breeze. The gentle scent of flowers on the air.

There was something soft under him, and it was terribly comfortable. Going back to sleep was his immediate first urge, and he had just about given in when his common sense told him that something wasn’t right.

Curtis opened his eyes to find himself in a round room, something that reminded him of a study of sorts. Bookshelves lined the walls all the way up to the extremely high ceilings, where some kind of large animal skeleton was hanging amongst the carefully placed models of planets and stars.

The ceiling was painted blue, decorated with constellations he didn’t know, and if he tilted his head a bit he could see a railing running around the room to separate the lower section where he sat from a second level up by the shelves.

Carefully, Curtis rolled over on his side and pushed himself up to lean on one arm. The usual pain he expected to feel didn’t come, nor did the constant weakness he had grown accustomed to.

There were more things of great interest to him in the room. The chaise he was lying on was off to the side, but more toward the middle was a large desk covered with books and papers, and over by the one tall, wide window there was an extraordinary looking telescope. Maps and navigational gadgets, star maps, models of ships and various oddities under glass…Curtis couldn’t have found a place more inviting if he had personally decorated it himself.

The music was coming from the wide sill of the window, where a tall man with dark skin and shining golden braids sat. He was stretched out, dressed in soft, cream-colored robes, lazily playing a silvery flute as the sunshine spilled down from outside.

Curtis sat all the way up, swinging his feet quietly down to the floor. He was wearing similar robes to the other man, and they were just as soft and comfortable as the chaise. The floors were wood, smooth and polished and cool under his bare feet as he got up.

It didn’t take a genius to know this place wasn’t real. It was intricately done, to be sure, but there was just some tiny something missing that clued in the senses to the fact that he wasn’t really here. It stood to reason, then, that the other man wasn’t really here either.

The man’s ears were pointed, not as much as an Altean’s but enough to say that he wasn’t human, and even sitting down Curtis could tell he was very tall. He gave off what Roxanne would have described as “good vibes,” not threatening or dangerous in the least.

He must have noticed when Curtis came to stand near him by the window, but he didn’t stop playing at first. It gave him a few moments to look out, to see the beautiful, snow-capped mountains in the distance and the sprawling little village directly down below in the spring-like valley.

This was the kind of place Curtis could have lost himself in for days. The beautiful view, which was undoubtedly even more beautiful by night when the stars came out, the countless books, the soft pillows and overstuffed chairs all over the place just waiting for someone to settle in and read…this was exactly how he would have described his own personal heaven.

After a few more minutes the music stopped, not abruptly but by winding down to the piece’s natural end. When the man finished he set the flute down in his lap.

“I’m a little out of practice, but it could be worse,” he supposed.

“I thought it was nice,” Curtis said honestly. “I’ve never heard that particular piece before.”

“You wouldn’t,” the man smiled. “It was composed a few million years ago…an ode to a sun that stopped rising long before that.”

Well, having been composed millions of years before his birth was as good an excuse as any for him not to be familiar with it. Curtis sat on the edge of the windowsill when the man moved his legs, giving him another quick, more thorough look.

“I’m going to guess, given the shiny hair and the glimmery skin, that you’re some version of the Gold from down in the containment lab.”

“Your guess would be right,” Gold answered amiably. “I hope you don’t mind, I borrowed a bit of your brain to make this place. Astral plane pockets need some kind of physical foundation, whether it’s organic brain space or extra room on a ship’s hard drive.”

“I assume you mean a living brain,” Curtis supposed. “Which would imply that I’m not dead.”

“No, very much the opposite,” Gold replied. “You’re in a very deep sleep right now, going through a very condensed but full physical recovery.”

That gave Curtis pause. A few different answers danced through his head, some of them mundane statements and some of them questions. It was difficult to know what, exactly, Gold meant, and Curtis hated looking like an idiot even if questions were expected.

“Recovery?” He finally gave in and asked. “Meaning…?”

“Meaning recovery,” Gold replied. “I think the literal definition is “a return to good health” or something like that.”

Curtis gave him an annoyed look.

“You know I’m explicitly asking about the cancer,” he said flatly. “Did you heal me somehow?”

Gold cracked a slight smile.

“Sorry. It’s just so funny when people who usually have all the answers look confused.”

He raised the flute and gave it a little twirl, making it disappear into trails of mist. When it was out of the way he shifted around to sit properly, his back now to the lovely view of outside.

“I didn’t heal you, that’s not in my power. Direct contact with the quintessence field healed you, all I did was protect you from overexposure. I still have a hold on you that’s stopping it from poisoning you, but you’re lucky. Normally you’d have to wait a lot longer for it to dissipate enough to be safe, but your body was so worn out from being sick that the excess is being absorbed to fix it. The cancer itself is gone, you’re rebuilding muscle mass and repairing damaged organ tissue now.”

For a few seconds, Curtis forgot to breathe. Not that it mattered, he didn’t appear to actually need to do so here.

That…was not news that he was prepared to hear. He had been ready to pass on, he had tied up as many loose ends as he could and put all his affairs in order. The slow, inexorable march toward the end had loomed large and unstoppable, and now he was being told he’d been granted a stay of execution.

He didn’t know how he felt.

It was a good feeling, definitely, but it was a confused one. Joyful? Ecstatic? It was a weird mix of relief and happiness and exhaustion and just…multiple other emotions he didn’t have names for. He wasn’t even certain he dared to believe it.

“So, when this is all over with, I’ll be okay?” Curtis asked carefully. “I’ll be up and walking around and…okay?”

“Walking,” Gold answered. “Talking. Possibly throat-punching people in stressful situations. Your blood pressure in general doesn’t seem to be good, you might want to think about a job change, but okay other than that. And I’m not judging you on the throat-punching, by the way, just to be clear.”

Gold got up and moved away from the window, over to a small glass table in the middle of the room. There were images here, light projections in stunning detail, digital sculptures that could be changed or rearranged on a whim. He ran his fingers across the surface, and an image flickered into the space above it, the IGF Atlas in perfect reproduction.

“You’re back aboard your ship,” Gold told him. “The young woman, Allura, she and a few others came through the rift gate to bring you back. She’s very distraught at the moment, as are the others…unfortunately, shielding you from overexposure also meant that my natural inability to be sensed covered your core as well.

“Normally I would tell you to sit back and relax here for a while, but I think it’s a better idea if you wake up sooner than later…I don’t know what your people do with the bodies of their deceased, but you probably don’t want to find out while you’re still alive.”

Curtis rose and came to join him, watching the ship float quietly in space. Three smaller ships moved around it, so dwarfed by it that he had to lean in close to see it was the Sincline ships.

“Wait, is this in real time?” He asked, impressed with the imagery. “Am I actually watching the ships as they are right now?”

“It’s neat, isn’t it?” Gold asked, leaning forward against the table to watch the smaller vessels dart around the larger. “I find it so amazing that such little tiny creatures could create interstellar transportation on such a massive scale. Most of the people on that ship will probably never see more than a fraction of it.”

“It’s built to be a world of its own,” Curtis couldn’t help but feel a little bit proud that an advanced entity like the Gold would find their achievements impressive. “People can live there, work there, raise families there if necessary. It was meant to go on missions lasting years.”

He straightened up a little, and as he did he noticed one of the digital sculptures in a position of prominence. It was a woman, her long black hair pulled back in a braid, streaked through with veins of bronze. She stood with her hands on her hips, just above the chipped and well-used war scythes that hung there, her leather armor broken-in and used.

“Your girlfriend?” Curtis asked, nodding toward the sculpture. Gold followed his gaze and gave a small, depreciating smile.

“Wishful thinking,” he replied.

“Too bad. She’s not my type, but I can admit that she’s hot.”

“Are you sure she’s not your type?” Gold asked, resting his chin on his hand and looking amused. “You might want to take a closer look.”

His reply made Curtis feel a bit like he was being made fun of, but he didn’t see the joke. He raised an eyebrow and did as asked, taking a second look at the sculpture. He got the impression that there was more to it than initially met the eye, given Gold’s response, but nothing immediately jumped out at him.

“What am I supposed to be looking for?” He finally asked.

Gold flicked his fingers. “Try now.”

Curtis glanced back over at the sculpture, but this time it was far more familiar. About the same height as before, same pose, same armor and scythes. But the hair was shorter and the hourglass figure gone, replaced by an athletic build and broader shoulders.

“…get _out_,” Curtis looked at the figure of Ryou, trying to wrap his head around that. “No way. Seriously?”

The figure melted back into that of the woman, but now the similarities were much clearer. The sheer attitude of the stance and expression, like she was about to flip both middle fingers and then complain that they were out of Lucky Charms, even if the facial features were different it depicted Ryou in substance if not in shape.

“That was him before he was him,” Gold answered, reaching up to lightly spin the image of the Atlas. “And I have to admit, bonding doesn’t seem to have changed him much.”

“You knew him back then?” Curtis asked, now even more curious. “Back when we were first looking at you, he said he’d never personally met any Golds.”

“That’s because he knew me before I was a Gold,” Gold replied. “I was a Steel when we were growing up, and to be honest, we didn’t know each other well. We ran in different circles, as it were…Che’lohdi was outgoing and popular and I was…how would you say it? I’m trying to think of what the equivalent might be on Earth. Something like…overdramatic theater kid.”

“Oh,” Curtis nodded in understanding. “We call that “gay.”

“No, no, that doesn’t work,” Gold said absently, spinning the Atlas image again. “Our physical sex and gender are only reflections of our internal state at any given time, they’re fluid and can change as our circumstances and mental state do. Attraction to all is the same, we don’t have words to differentiate. But that aside, we knew each other somewhat but were never extremely close, circumstances pulled us in different directions and wouldn’t allow it. Until recently, when I found him again in this reality.”

“Oh.”

It clicked then, Gold’s willingness to help him. The almost loving detail both forms of the sculpture were rendered in. The way he talked about these two faces like they were the same person, which in reality they were. Gold had been sweet on this Che’lohdi, and that appeared to have carried over to her current state as Ryou.

Ryou, who was the main reason why he was here in the first place. Curtis looked at the sculpture again, the memory of what he’d been doing flooding back and washing away all the comfort this place had brought.

“Did he make it?” Curtis asked the question outright, before he had time to overthink it. “You obviously reached the rift gate. Did he survive that long?”

“That…is something we need to talk about,” Gold sighed, pushing away from the table. He moved over to a seat near the chaise, gesturing to the place where Curtis had awakened. “Sit. Please. His current state needs to be discussed.”

Curtis’ stomach dropped. That did not sound like Ryou had survived. How absolutely, terribly ironic that the mere mortal with only hours of time left would be the one to walk away, while the infinite immortal had fallen. Fallen while trying to protect something he hadn’t needed to risk himself for, no less. Ryou had gone down fighting for Earth, a planet he had barely managed to truly call home for more than a few weeks.

He followed Gold over to the chaise, but he didn’t sit down yet. He could already tell that Gold was the type who tried to soften blows with gentle words, and he didn’t want that right now. He had important questions that needed direct answers.

“When someone like him passes away, they’re reborn again later, right?” Curtis asked. “They don’t leave the universe, they’re still here until it ends. And as long as he’s here in this reality, in any form, she’ll keep coming for him. Won’t she?”

Gold raised his eyebrows slightly, giving Curtis a thorough look. Not expecting that kind of question, most likely, only prepared to console him then send him back to his life. Possibly now reevaluating him.

“She will,” Gold confirmed. “This thing that puppets Honerva, it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen. I know Kuro told you that he’s much bigger than the body he inhabits, but this thing is huge even compared to us. It’s power is only held in check by the fact that it can only get a small fraction of itself into this world, through the body of its host. As long as that’s true, people like Kuro will continue to be a threat to it, and it will want to neutralize those threats.”

The full scope of the parasite in Honerva was news, but the rest of the answer was exactly what Curtis expected.

“I couldn’t help him,” Curtis murmured, finally sitting down on the edge of the chaise. “I know, logically, that he didn’t need me to protect him. He’s a fighter, he’s powerful. But the biggest fight he put up was the battle to stay gentle, to not have to hurt anybody or kill anything. And I just feel like maybe if I had been more than some weak little human I could’ve stepped in, I could’ve helped stop it from getting to the point where he had to hurt people.

“He’ll be out there again eventually, walking around and living, and I know he’s not going to change. He’ll still keep fighting for the right to stay soft and not let the universe turn him into a killer. He’s not going to need help for that, he’s strong enough to hold his own, but I…want to make it easier. Even if I never cross his path again, I want to take some of this weight before it finds him again. There’s really only one way I can think of to do that, and I know what it costs so I know it’s asking a lot. But you’ve got to know someone, somewhere, who’d be willing to help me.”

Gold looked up at him somberly, and maybe it was Curtis’ imagination but for a moment he almost looked sad. Then he dropped his head back down and sat back in his chair, gesturing again to the chaise.

“Sit,” he requested again. “There really is a lot to talk about.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“Lance!”

Shiro stepped out of the lift and looked around, knowing the younger Paladin was around here somewhere. He only had a few minutes’ head start, and he hadn’t been going far.

“Down here!”

Shiro followed the voice down the hall, to the entrance to one of the docking bays. The Lorelia, dwarfed by the Atlas, had come in for a landing and its crew was disembarking. Lance stood by the double doors, waiting for Lotor.

“Lotor!” Shiro called sharply, motioning for the other man to hurry up and join them. Lotor initially looked annoyed, but then must have noticed the urgency. He excused himself and jogged over.

“Down here,” Shiro ordered, leading them both away from the docking bay. He just needed an empty office, which he found a few doors down. Locking the door, he went to the desk and activated the console with the Captain’s code, turning on the comms. “Okay, I have Lance here. Lotor too. You guys are on the open line.”

“We’re holding our position on this side of the rift gate,” Adam’s voice came over the speaker, slightly distorted from the way it was being filtered through the Red Lion and to the Atlas’ communications. “Hunk and I are here. Pidge and Keith stayed behind, but we found somebody who might be helpful. He’s with them.”

“Wait, back up,” Shiro requested, sitting on the edge of the desk. “Keith and Pidge stayed behind where? I need you to start from the beginning.”

“Well, we made a wrong turn when we came in,” Hunk broke in. “As it turns out, Keith’s Lion is a kind of a jerk and really bad with directions on top of it. We got stuck in something called a wild tide—“

“You got stuck in a _what_!?” Shiro exclaimed. How the hell had they gotten anywhere near a wild tide? There were several other universes that made contact with this one nearby, he had been confident that if they went far enough they would hit one of those unbroken borders and simply bounce back in the direction they’d come from.

“—and a big thing with lots of teeth went after Pidge,” Hunk didn’t even take a breath, let alone let Shiro interrupt him. “But then this big dragon came and helped us out, but we were already swept out almost past the border of existence, so we had to take shelter in the first safe place he found, and it had an atmosphere and gravity.”

He went quiet, leaving the three people standing in the office to stare at the comm screen in disbelief, all of them trying to process the running stream of consciousness they’d just been given.

“_…and_?” Shiro demanded. “Adam. Elaborate?”

“No, he’s pretty much got the details,” Adam replied, wincing slightly and reaching up under his helmet to rub his eye. “Listen, it’s just as insane in person as it sounds to hear it secondhand, I swear to you. I’ll upload the Lions’ scanner readings when we’re back so you can see, but this current we got caught up into must have been crazy to sweep us so far so fast. Katie and I were both tracking the environment, we got to a point where the sensors could pick up almost none of the building blocks for worlds. It was just empty space…and then right there in the middle of literally nowhere there was like, this pocket world.”

“Another reality?” Lance asked. “Hunk, remember when we ended up on that ship while we were checking out the trans-reality comet Sincline is made from?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely dude. But this wasn’t that,” Hunk answered. “We didn’t cross over any boundaries, it was just like coming in to land through a new planet’s atmosphere but without the friction. We got out of the Lions and walked around a bit and everything, there was air and some kind of membrane shield against quintessence field radiation. And we found a road!”

“And Keith and Pidge are still there?” Shiro frowned. “With Black and Green, I assume?”

“Yes. And the one who helped us out of that current,” Adam answered, pushing his helmet up so he could rub both of his eyes this time. “Black said he was a Sentinel, they’re calling him Onyx. He was with those Golds of yours when Curtis and Kuro came through, but said by the time he found us that Allura had probably already brought them out.”

“Yeah,” Lance said slowly, looking uncomfortable. “They’re…here. It’s not good, man. It’s…I’m sorry.”

Shiro expected a distraught response, especially given how close Adam and Curtis were. What he didn’t expect was for Adam to swear and pull off his helmet, rubbing hard at both eyes.

“Are you okay?” Shiro asked worriedly. “Is something wrong?”

“My eyes are burning,” Adam answered with a soft hiss. “Jesus Christ, it really hurts.”

“Hunk, are you all right?” Shiro checked the other Paladin, who looked completely fine. He gave a little shrug and a soft grunt as if to say he was okay, so it wasn’t a case of their trip to the edge of existence making them both sick.

Adam suddenly got up, disappearing quickly from view.

_He’s in the head_, Blue said in response to the question Shiro didn’t even get a chance to ask. _Putting water on his face. His readings are all over the place, he needs medical attention right away. I think he’s rejecting his implants._

“Why now, all of a sudden?” Lotor asked. He paused, then looked over at Shiro, pointing to the screen. “That’s one of the Lions that spoke, yes? I’m not just talking to myself, am I?”

“No, that was Blue,” Shiro assured him, already on his way out of the office. “She’s not as contained when she’s in the rift, and you’re sensitive enough to pick up her voice. Lance!”

Lotor and Lance scrambled after him as he jogged back toward the docking bay, to the lift that would take them up to the Lion hangar.

“What is it?” Lance asked breathlessly. “What’s going on?”

“Adam’s body is rejecting his eye implants,” Shiro answered, slamming the button to go up several times. “We need Hunk to stay just on the other side of the rift gate as long as it’s safe to, in case we get a hail from the others. But I don’t want him to be there alone, and we need to bring Blue in.”

“Got it,” Lance slipped past him when the lift stopped squeezing out through the door when it was barely even open. “Red and I will get out there.”

“Thank you. Blue?”

_Just waiting for Red_, she answered. _As soon as she’s here with Yellow I’ll bring us in on autopilot._

Lance was already boarding Red before Shiro and Lotor were even halfway across the hangar, desperately needing some kind of activity to help distract him from the worst of the day. He was delayed only by the fact that he had to wait for the two older men to run to the safety of the launch room, where they wouldn’t be in any danger from the airlocks opening.

“This isn’t good, obviously,” Lotor said once they had the door safely closed and were watching Red take off. “I don’t know much about human medicine, but rejection of implants and transplants is fairly common in both Galra and Alteans and it’s never pretty for either of them.”

“It’s not pretty for humans either,” Shiro agreed, forcing himself to stay calm. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Ryou was the one who knew the most about how these eye implants were hooked up in his head, and we don’t have him to ask anymore.”

“Can you heal him at all?” Lotor asked, giving a half-hearted wiggle of his fingers as if he were casting a spell or something. “You’re the White Lion now, aren’t you? Alchemy should be your thing.”

“I don’t really understand human anatomy like that,” Shiro said nervously, ignoring his stupid hand motions for the moment. “An arm or a leg, a break or a scratch, sure, that’s mostly the same whether it’s Altean or Human. But trying to do anything that close to his brain without knowing fully how it’s wired…”

He trailed off, and Lotor nodded in understanding. They both fell silent and waited until a page came through that doctors had pulled Adam’s records and scans and two techs were on standby just outside the hangar with a gurney.

It was shortly after that Blue came in for a landing, leaving Shiro impatiently waiting for the airlock to close so he could grant the techs access and lunge out of the launch room.

Blue’s head was down and her mouth open when he reached her, bounding up into her hold. The cockpit was empty, he found Adam still in the head, the water still running and forgotten as he sat on his knees.

“Are you okay?” Shiro asked breathlessly, dropping down beside him and forcefully pulling his hands away so he could see. “Jesus Christ, what did you do?”

There was some blood, running down Adam’s face like tears, accidentally smeared and unintentionally making everything look even more horrific than it probably was. Shiro could see right away there was something wrong, one implant was fully dilated and the other almost closed, but Adam yanked away from his hold before he could see much detail.

“I didn’t do anything!” He exclaimed, understandably irritable in his pain. “It feels like the metal is cutting my damn skin open!”

“That’s what it looks like, too,” Shiro murmured. He hooked an arm around Adam’s middle and lifted him up to his feet, guiding him quickly across the hold and down out of the ship. “There’s a gurney ready, doctors are waiting. Can you see?”

“No.”

With that one word, Shiro’s heart almost broke. It wasn’t harshly spat or irritably hissed, it was plaintive and pained and sounded almost like Adam was going to cry.

The techs were just arriving as he half-carried Adam out into the hangar, helping him sit down on the gurney. As much as he hated to do it, he helped them pull Adam’s hands away from his eyes again, so one of them could quickly shine a light and see if there was any outer indication of what they were dealing with. It lasted all of two seconds, but felt like hours.

“Lay down,” Shiro instructed as the gurney started to move, falling into step beside it and holding one of Adam’s hands as he did. “We’re not going far. I know it hurts, just hang in there.”

Adam wasn’t the kind of person who liked to show weakness in front of others, which made the way he held on tightly to Shiro’s hand and breathed in quick, shallow, whimpering breaths all the more worrisome. It was even worse that they had to take a longer trip up to the officers’ medical bay, thanks to the general population one being quarantined and sanitized after removing the measles patients.

The officers’ bay was much smaller as well, which meant once they arrived Shiro had to surrender Adam completely into the hands of the two waiting doctors. There simply wasn’t any room back in Exam and Surgical for anyone who wasn’t necessary medical staff.

“I’ll be right here,” Shiro promised, giving Adam’s hand one final squeeze before relinquishing it. “Right outside, less than ten yards away, I’m not going anywhere.”

Adam said something in Portuguese in response, a bit less pained and a little more spitfire, most likely an attempt at putting on a brave face in front of an audience. Shiro watched him disappear through the double doors, one of the doctors already leaning over him to get a closer look and another calling out that he was going ahead to get ready for a scan, and felt an uncharacteristic wave of anger.

It wasn’t necessarily out of order, he knew his anger was justified. He was allowed to be pissed off at a universe that just kept picking away at people, gradually taking away everything and giving nothing in return, stripping away every moment of rest and not even allowing a few seconds of contentment. But it was uncharacteristic because Shiro was a man who took deep breaths and swallowed down insult, not a man who got angry.

And he could keep taking hits and getting back up, and keep turning the other cheek for as long as necessary, as long as it was him the universe was coming for. But this was different, this was Adam, and Shiro was so ungodly pissed off right now that his armor overlay flashed up at his wrist with a warning that his immediate environment was experiencing a sudden rise in quintessence radiation.

It was just one thing after another. An abusive and lonely childhood, churning out an adolescent—a _child_—who had been forced to learn how to feel and emote and empathize on his own, with only a couple of peers to nudge him in the right direction. A promising piloting career cut short by a traumatizing crash, a relationship torn apart by a fatal illness and the man who had handled it so badly he’d abandoned him toward the end. A forced call back to active duty, back into a fighter jet whether he wanted to go or not, the assumed loss of both the aforementioned ex and several students within a year of each other. An attack on his home planet, another devastating crash resulting in the loss of his sight, a year and a half in captivity in a fighting pen, near death at the hands of a mad alchemist who’d used him as a lab animal, forced into being a Paladin.

That wasn’t even counting everything that had happened today alone, and now Adam had to deal with this? The implants forced on him by his captors going to hell, and God only knew what that faulty wiring might do to his brain.

The warning was still sounding, but Shiro ignored it. It was just the armor picking up internal fluctuations and no danger to anyone else, he was too angry to bother with it. He started pacing, wishing he could punch something. Put a hole in the wall or ruin some crates or just beat the living hell out of _something_. There was only so much even he could push down before it finally got to him, and he was reaching his limit. He was angry and he was worried and he was upset and he was a thousand different things that he had been putting off feeling for years, leaving him standing here in a furious mess of exhaustion and dirt and God, with his heart pounding and blood pumping it was beginning to feel almost ridiculously hot under these layers.

_Hot_.

Shiro’s pacing slowed, gradually coming to a stop. His anger was abruptly derailed, spilling over instead into uncertainty.

He was feeling hot. His face was flushed, his pulse was fluttering. Natural biological reactions to the stress from extreme anger. Just those biological reactions, and nothing else.

No chill. No cold. No icy fingers creeping up his spine and along his skin. Shiro pulled off his gloves and looked at his hands, at the chipped nails and bruised skin that could have used a bit of moisturizer but otherwise were unchanged. There were no slivers of black slithering across the surface, no pervading sense of darkness creeping into his head.

Just raw, human emotion, unfettered and free. The foreboding sense that even a slight loss of control would bring his downfall didn’t come, no punishment was waiting in the wings for daring to be so impure as to feel.

“Are you all right?”

Lotor’s voice didn’t really carry any concern, but Shiro was used to that. He was a man who reserved his emotions for a very private few, and at the moment he was here in the capacity of one leader speaking to another rather than as a friend.

“…I am, yeah,” Shiro answered, looking up at him. “Surprisingly.”

One of the doctors came out, waving him over. She spoke quickly, needing to get back into the other room.

“They’re putting him under, we’re going to do surgery,” she told him. “We’re not sure what’s going on, but it looks like his body is literally pushing the implants out.”

“How does that even happen?” Shiro asked, confused. “They’re surgically implanted. I can see having some kind of reaction, but how the hell does a body _push out_ an entire replacement visual system?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” the doctor assured him. “This will be a while. I know you told him you’d wait here, but he’s not conscious and he won’t be for a while. There’s no point in sitting here the whole time.”

“I know,” Shiro admitted. “And he’d be mad if he found out I sat around being useless at a time like this. Call me the second you know anything?”

She nodded and disappeared, and Shiro took a moment to collect himself. Adam was in the hands of some of the best, on a ship equipped with top of the line equipment. By the time he came out of surgery there would also probably be a healing pod available if it was needed.

This would be okay, whatever happened. Like Adam had said earlier, the current problems needed to be wrapped up and then they would deal with the fallout together.

“Lance and Hunk are on standby waiting for the others,” he said finally, turning back to Lotor. “Let’s go get the emergency room cleared, then download whatever data Blue has to the Atlas and get a look. What’s the status on the field hospital?”

“About half of the backup medical personnel had arrived when I left,” Lotor replied as they left the room, stepping through the clean room and out into the hall. “The Lions are obviously not available to quickly move additional staff, but the cruiser’s strikers are being put to use. They move just as fast, though they carry far fewer people.”

It was something. It couldn’t really be helped that the Lions had once again gotten caught up in something right after being offered as transport, but at least there was a viable alternative in this case.

Shiro led Lotor to the lift and down to the MFE hangars. They went to the main medical bay through here, following the steps of the gurneys that had carried Curtis and Ryou through the ship. At the end of the long hallway were the sealed emergency room doors.

These sealing double doors were set at increments throughout the medical halls, meant to be used in the case of pathogens that needed to be controlled. That they might be needed to seal in quintessence radiation hadn’t really been taken into account when they were made, and it was by sheer luck that the material was of a decent thickness to do just that.

“Through those double doors,” Shiro indicated the doors that were a few feet down from the seal doors. “Ryou’s to the left, Curtis is to the right. They’ll need to be moved down a floor to the morgue, there’s a lift for that in the back.”

“You’ll wait here?” Lotor asked.

“I’m going around,” Shiro answered, pointing back at the intersection of the hallway around them. “The chief medical officer’s office is there, it has a window to see into the emergency room so he can see if he’s needed. I’ll watch from there.”

Lotor stepped forward and rested his hand against the door controls, waiting for Shiro to back up to safety. He heard the door open once he was around the corner, and seal back up again just as he was putting his access code into the CMO’s office entry.

The office was quiet and dark, its owner out helping sanitize the disease-exposed areas of the ship. Shiro knew he was taking advantage of his universal access, there could be medical records in here that were none of his business, so he was very careful about turning his attention immediately to the large, thick, polymer window that looked out into the empty emergency room. Empty except for Lotor, anyway, who was currently over at one of the supply carts pulling on a pair of disposable gloves and one of the disposable blue masks.

There was a hanging question as to whether it was safe for Shiro to go out there to join him. It stood to reason that one bonded pair was similar to another in strengths and weaknesses, and since a Guardian couldn’t suffer from overexposure then who was to say it was still a problem for Shiro right now? He told himself this was just out of an abundance of caution, but the truth was a little bit deeper than that.

He didn’t want to handle Ryou’s body.

It was the memory of seeing his mother—their mother, technically—after she had passed away that gave him this hang up. The dead never looked like they had when they were alive no matter how well they were presented, and the feeling of seeing one was a similar trip through the uncanny valley to what happened when presented with something robotic parading as a human. Instinctively the mind just knew that what it was looking at wasn’t living, that it was something Other masquerading as something Same, and this was simply far too soon for Shiro to handle that.

Lotor didn’t have any outward appearances of suffering from the same problem, but Shiro was careful not to assume. Ten thousand years was a very long time, certainly enough to have buried many friends, and just because he might have been used to it didn’t mean he was feeling nothing.

His professional demeanor was reassuring in a way, a quiet reminder that this was the way of human life and that it was normal and had its own associated routines. All things came to an eventual end, and Shiro was neither the first nor the last to feel this kind of loss.

Lotor pulled a sheet off an empty bed and brought it over, carefully draping it over Ryou and taking a few minutes to fold it so it didn’t hang down too far and get stuck under the gurney wheels. He worked from the feet up, gently folding and tucking where the fabric was too long, carefully lifting Ryou’s head to tuck the last bit under.

He started to remove his hands and straightened back up but stopped, his fingers hovering just above the surface of the sheet. Shiro couldn’t see Lotor’s whole face thanks to the mask but he could tell from his furrowed brow that he was frowning. His eyes flicked back and forth slightly, a man not really seeing what was in front of him as he tried to recall something from memory.

“Something wrong?” Shiro asked.

Slowly, Lotor uncovered Ryou’s head again, leaning over slightly for a better look.

“…he dyed his hair,” Lotor commented.

Shiro wasn’t really certain what that had to do with anything. Lots of people dyed their hair.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “He initially dyed the whole top blue for the winter dance, but decided he didn’t like it. So he dyed most of it back to black and kept just that strip in the front with a little purple added.”

“But not on the sides,” Lotor pressed. “He was going gray there. Well, silver.”

“Most dyes on Earth won’t take properly on gray or silver hair,” Shiro replied, perplexed with the line of questioning. “It’s not a natural color for us, it happens when we age and the makeup of the hair changes and loses melanin. Yes, he was silvering at the temples…it’s always happened early with the men in our family.”

“Are there any other colors that human hair naturally turns with age?” Lotor asked.

“Well…white,” Shiro supposed.

“Not gold?”

“No, not gold.”

“Ever?”

Shiro was beginning to get annoyed with the questions. He wasn’t a hair stylist, who was he to say that hair absolutely never turned blonde or gold with age? And why did it even matter?

“Is there something wrong, Lotor?”

Lotor looked up at him, then dropped the sheet. He moved around the gurney and pushed it over to the window, positioning it where Shiro could see it better. Then he lifted the sheet away and hooked a hand under Ryou’s head, lifting it carefully a few inches off the surface of the gurney.

The top of Ryou’s hair, which was most visible, was still black from the hair dye, with the exception of the blue and purple patch. But the lower half, hidden away under the top layer, was now a vivid gold color.

Not a normal human blonde either, but a shining metallic that caught the light and looked like metal threads.

“I’m coming in there,” Shiro decided, already backing away from the window.

“Are you sure?” Lotor called after him. “We might not want to take chances!”

But Shiro was already out of the office and jogging down the hall. He reached the seal door and didn’t hesitate to open it, stepping into the much colder room as soon as it slid open. The temperature had been lowered here since they hadn’t known how long they would be storing dead in this room, and he could see his breath as he strode across the open space without stopping for gloves or a mask.

“I’d say that’s unsanitary, but you’re already filthy,” Lotor commented when he reached the gurney and pulled the sheet down farther with bare hands.

“Look in a mirror sometime,” Shiro grumbled, giving him a brief, annoyed look. Lotor looked no better than the rest of them. Worse, even, huge chunks of his hair had been chopped off in the fighting, and at some point he’d made an attempt at cleaning his face and only managed to smear around the dirt.

He leaned over for a closer look, lightly brushing the hair at Ryou’s neck upward with his fingers, turning up the strands so that the black no longer hid what was underneath so well. Sure enough, thick patches of shimmering gold highlighted the way black dye had been thrown on haphazardly, with no regard for clean lines since it would just blend in with the natural color. But now the natural color had turned, leaving blobs and splotches and almost making Ryou look like he had a messy rendition of leopard print.

“It wasn’t like this when we brought him in,” Shiro insisted. “It wasn’t like this when we left them in here. This happened since then.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About an hour?” Shiro guessed. “Maybe an hour and a half.”

He leaned over again, tilting his head so that he was even with Ryou’s, studying the face that was so similar to his own in minute detail. He looked for that _something_, that indescribable little clue that warned the subconscious mind it was in the presence of the dead, but whatever it was that flipped that particular instinct wasn’t here. Ryou wasn’t moving, there was no breath or visible pulse, but there was also nothing about him that said “I’m not alive.”

“This is insane,” Shiro whispered, straightening back up a little. “This shouldn’t be able to happen.”

“What did happen?” Lotor wondered, leaning over as well. “Please try to remember that I don’t have the benefit of your newly-found millions of years of knowledge.”

“He was an Iron,” Shiro answered. “When he first bonded, his hair and eye color would have changed until the bond was fully solid, then it would fade back into his natural coloring. This flash coloring change, it means something in his bonded core changed.”

“You’re saying his current hair color may correspond to a change somehow from an Iron to a Gold,” Lotor murmured, keeping his voice as quiet as Shiro’s. “Which, from your shock, I have to assume is unexpected.”

“Well, yeah, the thought’s always been that once you bond you’re static and unchanging,” Shiro replied. “That’s one of the reasons for so much avoidance of it, the idea that now you’re stuck forever with no way to grow or advance in any meaningful way. To have this just suddenly pop up with no warning is…surprising, to say the least.”

“The mech should have been a clue,” Curtis said in a hushed tone. “Transmutation of solid matter on that scale is a perk of the three higher elements.”

“I didn’t _see_ the mech in person!” Shiro hissed irritably. “I didn’t know exactly how extensive the changes he made were, I was assuming it was just some tweaks like the others do with the Lions!”

Shiro shook his head in aggravation, abruptly freezing when he heard a loud crunch. He looked to the side at Lotor, who he found looking back at him with a frown. Slowly, they both turned their eyes upward to the third person standing by the gurney.

Curtis fought the huge chunk of cereal bar into his mouth, a lone piece of corn flake popping off to sail through the air just short of hitting Shiro in the face.

“Sorry,” he said, muffled, covering his mouth.

Shiro stared at him, feeling his brain glitch. Half of them were slogging around here practically in mourning over two lost lives and here Curtis stood, dressed in nurse’s scrubs and shoving food in his face. Except that the image of Curtis standing before them right now was very, very different from the last time they had seen him.

He no longer looked abnormally tall, no longer skin and bones and actually holding some weight that made him appear far better proportioned. He wasn’t as muscular as Shiro himself but he was built well, and with some work at the gym he probably could be. The scrubs he currently wore were even a bit tight across his chest, though that wasn’t the most distracting part.

The shining golden hair and glimmering eyes to match were a far more concerning change.

Curtis swallowed and looked back and forth between Shiro and Lotor, observing the two staring at him. Shiro expected him to say something to explain himself, but instead he slowly lifted the cereal bar back to his mouth.

“Really?” Shiro demanded, grabbing it out of his hand. “Are you kidding me?”

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t eaten in almost forty-eight hours!” Curtis complained. “Eight days, if we’re tracking back to the last real, solid meal I could stomach!”

Lotor reached up and poked Curtis in the shoulder, similar to the way he had done to Shiro, looking back and forth between them.

“You know, for as miserable a picture as you painted my future being, more and more people seem to keep joining this party,” Lotor commented. “I assume this is the result of the Gold and Curtis both attempting to survive?”

“No,” Curtis shook his head, looking slightly troubled at that assumption. “No, I’d never do something this serious at the spur of the moment, absolutely not. Both parties have been considering it on their own for a while, so there was a thorough and adult discussion about it. This was a mutual, thought-out decision after going through all the pros and cons.”

“Well, lucky you,” Shiro replied, dropping the cereal bar in a nearby metal waste bin with a loud “bong” sound.

“Oh, please don’t act like what you had to do didn’t work for you,” Curtis answered, hands on his hips. “You don’t do thorough and adult discussion, you do jumping in with both eyes closed and all your fingers crossed. _You’re _just cranky because you still need to finish sleeping off your change.”

“Why are you dressed like a strip-o-gram?” Shiro asked immaturely, settling on the first thing that came to mind to change the subject. Curtis looked down at himself and became flustered.

“You left me in here in my underwear!” He reminded him. “It’s cold, and this is all I could find nearby! Your brother might be more than willing to traipse naked through a town square just for the fun of it, but I’m a big fan of pants!”

“And with that, it’s now gotten weird,” Lotor announced, holding up both hands to stop them both. “Can I interrupt this very uncomfortable exchange to ask if I’m supposed to be taking a body down to the morgue? Or are we doing something else with him?”

“He’s not dead, obviously,” Curtis answered, which was annoying to Shiro because until now it had been very much not obvious. “I have him on a physical lockdown so nobody would disturb his rest. As Captain Shirogane can tell you, Ascension literally burns you to nothing and rebuilds you. He can’t wake up, but if I didn’t have him seem like he was dead everybody would be picking at him and examining him and trying to wake him up anyway.”

Shiro had to admit that Curtis did have a point. It was frustrating, but he could sort of understand. Curtis himself still looked as exhausted as Shiro felt, both of them desperately needed a few days’ rest, but with Curtis not awake yet nobody would have been able to tell the doctors to stop trying to harass Ryou into what would appear to be better health.

But that didn’t mean he liked it.

“Take him off “physical lockdown,” Shiro ordered.

“Wow,” Curtis murmured to himself, just barely not rolling his eyes as he moved past Shiro to the side of Ryou’s gurney. “I guess “please” is only for us peasants.”

Shiro ignored that, stepping back to give him room. Curtis leaned over, touching his lips lightly to Ryou’s and blowing the barest of breaths against them.

“Back to the land of the living, _Mon Tigre_,” he requested softly, smoothing Ryou’s hair back out of his face.

As Curtis straightened up, Ryou sucked in a deep breath. He went stiff for a moment before he relaxed again, practically melting into the gurney under him. His breathing continued, deep and even, and when Shiro touched his neck he could now feel a strong pulse.

“Was the kissing really necessary?”

“No, but look at him,” Curtis replied, smiling contentedly. “He’s so cute when he’s asleep, and he likes kisses.”

Clearly, health had improved Curtis’ mood exponentially. The almost crabby undercurrent that had been present since the overthrow of Sendak was gone, and he was far more relaxed than Shiro had ever seen him. Some of that might have been attributed to the Gold’s mannerisms shining through, but as he was seeing with his own transition, huge personality changes didn’t seem to happen.

Shiro sighed heavily and ran both hands through his hair, then rubbed his face. He was relieved that Ryou and Curtis were alive, of _course_ he was, but the stress of thinking they were dead still weighed on him. On top of that, now they had two new bondings to deal with, which was bad enough since nobody here really knew anything about it other than that it could be done. But they would also be stumbling through this over the next days and weeks while simultaneously trying to juggle Ryou’s new upgrade.

That was going to be fun, given Ryou’s staunch opposition to having or using power. He was probably going to freak out when he realized what he’d done, and being faced with what Curtis had done probably wouldn’t help.

Shiro felt like he was trying to herd cats, every time he turned around somebody was getting hurt, or dying, or committing a felony. They needed to get the others back here and they needed to get back to Earth, at which point they all absolutely needed at least a week to recover.

“_Captain Shirogane?_” A woman’s voice came over his comm, making him groan.

“God, now what?” He asked, looking upward toward the heavens.

Lotor hesitantly looked up as well, unfamiliar with the gesture.

“I’m here,” Shiro replied, leaning back against the nearby bed.

“_Dr. Shirogane is out of surgery_.”

“Already?” Lotor asked in surprise. Shiro was in agreement, he was already checking the time. There was no way any in-depth surgery could have occurred in the time they were here.

“_They’re requesting your presence up in the officer’s medical bay, sir._”

“Surgery?” Curtis’ more lighthearted air dissipated, his concern rolling in and bringing with it a far more familiar seriousness. “What was he doing in surgery?”

“He was rejecting his eye implants,” Shiro answered, starting toward the door. He paused, turning back to them.

“Radiation,” he remembered, pointing at Lotor. “Are they still shedding?”

“We shouldn’t be,” Curtis replied before Lotor could. “Between Ryou’s power-up and my recovery, most of the excess quintessence should have been reabsorbed.”

“He’s right,” Lotor agreed, checking his scanner before removing his mask and gloves. “They’re not giving off anything. The readings in the room are a bit elevated, but barely enough to give an average human a headache.”

“Okay…Curtis, you and Lotor take Ryou up to your quarters. I’m going to go see what’s going on with Adam, I know he’s going to hate waking up in a hospital bed so I’ll see if they’ll transfer him up to the Captain’s quarters and I’ll be up shortly.”

Curtis nodded, and Shiro pointed at him sternly.

“We’re not done talking about this,” he warned. “…cover your damn head with something before people notice.”

He stalked out of the room without waiting for an answer, heading straight for the lift. It was just one clown after another in this circus, and he was not being paid enough to be ringmaster.

The doctor he had first taken Adam into the back was standing by Nikolaev’s closed room, looking over his chart when Shiro arrived. She was still in her surgery scrubs, her mask hanging down around her neck and her hair still bound up in a hair net, seemingly just killing time while waiting for him. He cleared his throat to call her attention, and she quickly put the chart back.

“How is he?”

“He’s all right,” she assured him. “Awake, asking for you.”

“That fast?” Shiro asked. “Did you fix his implants?”

“Not exactly,” she said carefully, moving to pick up a sealed glass dish from a desk, holding it up for him to see.

They looked like exactly what they were; manufactured eyes and their associated nerves, completely removed from the body they’d been settled in. Shiro’s brain made the only possible jump it could, flipping over into panic mode over how Adam was going to react to being blind, but the doctor quickly set the dish down and put her hands on his arm to keep him calm.

“No, it’s not what it seems like!” She said quickly. “What happened back there follows almost exactly what we’ve seen in scans of Mr. McClain after his direct contact with the quintessence field. There are similar changes in Ms. McClain, Ms. Sil-Alfor and Ms. Vanquenxa after their own brushes with the field in Sincline over the last few months. Dr. Shirogane admitted that he was outside of his Lion while in the rift today, and we already know that putting humanoid races in direct contact with the quintessence field results in biological regeneration…especially to human tissue.”

That was a lot of words to parse through when he was already distressed. Shiro tried to work his way through what he was being told but he couldn’t, his brain was on the verge of shutting down right now. He realized he was going to have to hand the ship over completely to Coran, there was simply no way he was going to function usefully much longer.

“What does that even mean?” He asked, frustrated.

The doctor looked as if she were trying to find the words to express what she wanted to say, but couldn’t. Instead she took a few steps back and motioned for Shiro to go into the back ahead of her.

He did so, not sure what was going on as he was steered past the doors of this deck’s two small operating rooms and out into the three-bed recovery room. Adam’s ocular implants were laying in a damn dish on a desk but nobody here seemed very concerned, and he was having trouble putting those two facts together.

“Dr. Shirogane?” She called softly in warning as she pulled a curtain from one of the beds back slightly. “The Captain is here. I’m going to get ready to give you one last scan to make sure everything’s all right, then you should be okay to go soon. Okay?”

Shiro heard Adam murmur an affirmative, and the doctor paused to look at Shiro again.

“Quintessence heals,” she said, trying one last time to explain. “We know that much. But we’re only now starting to learn how much healing it does.”

She moved out of his way, and as she did she pulled the curtain back all the way, then walked back the way they’d come to leave them alone.

Shiro froze completely then, trying to accept what was in front of his face. After the panic and the fear, the worry and the anger, he suddenly just felt numb and empty and tired. He was sure, for a moment, that his own brain was playing tricks on him, until Adam gave him a tired smile and patted the bed beside him.

Moving carefully, Shiro sat down on the edge, still staring. Slowly, he reached up to rest a hand on Adam’s cheek, running his thumb across smooth, clear skin where only hours ago there had been a swathe of jagged scarring. Golden brown eyes looked back at him, wide and whole, no metallic steel reflections or pained wincing at the light.

Even the bits of stress-induced gray that had been working their way through the bronzy hair were gone, wiping away at least a few years of tragedy that had altered his appearance.

Adam stared right back at him, his healthy eyes wide, flicking from one feature to another. Seeing him for what was really the first time in years, the way he really looked instead of through some digital equivalent.

Shiro didn’t have any words left. He had been preparing for the worst, he never would have imagined that this was the result he’d be met with. He could only _imagine_ what Adam must be feeling right now, having accepted the loss of his sight and coming to terms with the fact that it didn’t make him any less.

He pulled Adam into a tight hug, acutely aware of the fact that the doctors had removed his husband’s armor while Shiro still had his own. Although nowhere near as strong as he was these days, Adam still returned it with what could have been a rib-crushing hug of his own, practically clinging to him as the last few days finally started to really overwhelm him.

They were done, all of them. Shiro didn’t care if war broke out again tomorrow, he was putting them all out of commission as soon as Keith and Pidge returned. He refused to keep bending the people he cared about until they broke, regardless of the consequences sidelining the Paladins might have.

He held Adam tightly for a few minutes, gently rubbing his back, resting his head against the other’s. Trying to comfort him the way he’d been comforted earlier in the day. Eventually, when he felt Adam finally relax a little in his arms, he turned to lightly kiss his temple.

“You should play the lottery,” he murmured. “You’re predicting the future.”

“Hm?”

Shiro pulled back just enough to rest his forehead against Adam’s, angled back just enough that he could see his face clearly. They were alone, thankfully, with nobody to overhear.

“All that I am, all that I ever was,” Shiro sang softly, continuing with another verse of Adam’s gentle song to him earlier, “is here in your perfect eyes, they’re all I can see.”

Adam stared at him for a moment, then broke into a smile. His eyes started to fill with tears, happy tears, Shiro knew, and he buried his face against Shiro’s neck and hugged him tightly again.

Shiro held him firmly, knowing that he would have to let go sooner or later when the others returned, but promising himself it would only be for the short while it would take to get the Atlas returned to Earth. Then he would be back, holding Adam again, this time on their way home to clean up and rest and hide until they recovered.

He was done letting go. The universe was finite and everything would eventually end, and he was determined to hold on to everything he had for as long as he still possibly could.


	18. Chapter 18

The trip felt like it was taking forever, with no change in scenery to mark the passing of distance. Logically, Keith knew that going back the way they came was longer for a whole host of factors, like the fact that the Black Lion was carrying the Green’s extra weight, they were now moving without the aid of a powerful current, and he personally had nothing to do to keep his hands and mind busy.

All he had to track the time by were the sharp pains that hit his abdomen at regular intervals, feeling like something lodged beneath his ribs. At several points he had been convinced that the hole in his middle was still there, and had even checked on more than one occasion. But it was gone, healed up perfectly. The pain was coming from inside, from whatever had leeched out of Black’s sword and into his system.

It took every shred of self-control he had not to continuously ask if they were almost there, or badger Pidge into trying to go faster. The Black Lion had recharged quickly once they were back in the thick of the quintessence field, it was already going at the maximum speed that Green could make it go.

The problem was that it wasn’t her ship. She was used to the inner workings of the Green Lion, and the Black one had entirely different strengths and controls.

More than once, Keith left the cockpit to quietly pace. Pidge was piloting, and once they were out of that curious little pocket of mixed space Green had once again receded to an incorporeal form. He could still converse with her if he wanted to, but it was a little weird.

He repeatedly went to check on Onyx, who wasn’t doing so well. Black had gotten him even worse than he’d gotten Keith, leaving him pretty badly torn up and probably suffering from the same bone-deep poisoning that Green wasn’t able to purge. Unlike Green, Onyx remained physical and solid, and when he woke Keith was able to slowly help him up off the floor to sit on the bed in the hold.

Onyx had drifted off shortly after that, and Keith left him alone. If the Sentinel’s pain was worse than what he was going through, he was more than welcome to sleep through it.

He eventually went back to sit on the side console and played with his bayard, staring off into space until he began to drift off himself. He was startled awake when Pidge finally spoke out loud, breaking the silence that had seemed to stretch on for several tired hours.

“Hunk, Lance, I have you on my scanner. You should have visual on us in a few minutes.”

“Finally,” Hunk sighed in relief. “We were starting to get worried. I’ve been getting your transmissions, but they’ve been mostly garbled from distance and interference.”

Pidge looked up at Keith, and let a breath out through her nose.

“Well…you’re not going to like the ungarbled version,” she warned. “Be prepared. The Green Lion is still dead and the Black Lion will be out of commission once we land. We also have a Sentinel down.”

“Uh oh,” Hunk went on alert. On screen, the staticky images that had been forming over the comm link became clear and visible, as the Yellow and Red Lions loomed up on the viewscreen. “Was it another runvilar?”

Pidge looked at Keith again, but he didn’t have any way of phrasing it that wouldn’t worry the others either.

“We’ll talk when we disembark,” he said, leaning over the pilot seat to be seen. “Is the Atlas nearby?”

“Yeah, we called it out as soon as we came out of the rift,” Lance said, drifting closer. “Let me help with Green.”

“No!” Keith heard Pidge yell at the same time he did, both of them startling Lance. “Don’t touch it!”

“Why? What’s—” Lance cut off, tensing up and looking like somebody had just dumped a glass of ice cubes down his shirt. Even Keith could feel the anger suddenly ripping through Red, leaking through the last faint traces of the link he’d initially had with her. Apparently she didn’t need to be told what happened.

“Oh, that’s bad,” Hunk whispered, his own eyes wide as a similar—but probably milder—reaction ran through Yellow. “Something’s got the cats mad.”

“Back to the Atlas,” Keith ordered. “I need Shiro down in the hangar to meet us. Where’s Adam?”

“Uh,” Lance looked over at Hunk, scratching the back of his head. “I think that’s something else that might have to wait until we disembark.”

Keith left it alone. He was too tired to argue.

Red led the way back through the gate, and Pidge let Yellow go next so Hunk wouldn’t be forced to bring up the rear. Keith had never been so happy to see the cold darkness of space as he was now, having it finally replace the vast expanse of annoyingly blinding light.

The Atlas floated quietly only a few hundred miles away, only a short trip through fairly peaceful space. No attacks by Galra factions, then, they were probably all licking their wounds from the Colony Two fight.

“Atlas, this is the Black Lion,” Keith hailed as Red and Yellow made their way to the Lions’ docking bay. “Coran, do you copy?”

“Loud and clear, Number Four.”

“Black isn’t going to dock. Get us a wormhole back to Earth space, I’ll explain when we get there.”

He didn’t expect any kind of argument. Coran knew they wouldn’t be making this request for no reason, all they really had to wait for was for him to inform Shiro they were going and announce for the crew to prep for the trip. It didn’t take very long, and in short order the Black Lion was dropping out into lunar space with the Earth floating quietly below.

They veered off then, away from the Atlas and the Sincline ships that were still dancing around it. Allura had hailed them but Keith had muted the line, unwilling to have hard conversations through two-dimensional screens. They all needed to talk, live.

“Where are we going?” Keith asked as Pidge nudged the Black Lion into the moon’s gravitational pull.

“There’s nowhere safe we can leave this thing on Earth,” she answered. He could tell by her tone that it upset her to leave her Lion, even though Green herself was currently settled in this one. “It needs to be where we can keep track of it but no civilians can accidentally get near it.”

Keith might have been a drop out, but his expulsion had nothing to do with his academic abilities. He knew the lunar map as well as any cadet, and it wasn’t hard to name the basaltic plane where several of China’s Luna missions had landed back in the twentieth century.

Oceanus Procellarum. The Sea of Storms.

The crater they came down in was called Schiaparelli, and of no real significance to any active lunar missions as far as Keith knew. Sheltered from outside view since it was on the near side of the moon, it was an ideal place to quarantine the Green Lion until they could figure out what to do.

Pidge dropped green from a higher altitude than she would have down on Earth, the lesser gravity taking a lower toll as it fell and landed in the depression below. As the dust settled they could see the ship, splayed out on the ground like a wounded animal. Keith had never realized how much control the Guardians really exerted over the ships, but it hit home seeing the Green Lion lying below without any conscious mind to center its balance or secure its limbs. It was just a lifeless doll.

“I hate leaving her up here alone,” Pidge murmured as the Black Lion ascended. “I know it’s just a ship and that Green is here with me, but she’s our ship and it just doesn’t feel right.”

“I get it,” Keith assured her. “We’ve been through a lot with these Lions. Lifetimes. It’s not “just a ship,” it’s your war paint and battle armor. Don’t worry, we’ll figure out how to get her cleaned up and back online.”

“I hope so.”

Now Pidge finally turned the Black Lion back to the base, and it was only a few more minutes until she was bringing it in a bit clumsily to land on the tarmac and walk it carefully into the Lion hangar. Keith had just finished directing her on how to properly get it seated and its head lowered when Shiro came tearing into the hangar on foot.

He still hadn’t had a chance to shower, and on top of it he was now panting heavily from running across the landing field.

“What happened?” He demanded, looking up at the Lion from outside. “Red and Blue are losing their minds and I can’t understand a thing!”

“Give us a sec!” Keith complained, powering the Black Lion down. “Jeez.”

He and Pidge went into the hold, and found Onyx stirring. He looked at them blearily as he sat up, pushing his messy hair from his eyes. Keith hesitated to touch him.

“I kind of figured you’d still be here when we crossed over, since Green said something about you being able to exist here without a ship or anything,” he admitted nervously. “But are you going to…um…sprout wings or something if we treat you too rough?”

Onyx looked up at them with a slightly confused look on his face, then laughed softly as he processed the question.

“No,” he shook his head slightly, running a hand through his hair. “I can only be physically present when I’m in this shape. If I were to shift to my native one, I would become incorporeal and you wouldn’t be able to interact with me anymore. And even if I wanted to do that, I don’t think I’m strong enough to right now.”

“So you’re trapped in this form?” Pidge asked as Keith leaned over, hooking one of Onyx’s arms around his neck to help him up to his feet. When he was up, she went to support his other side.

“Trapped? No,” Onyx murmured as they slowly started the walk out of the hold and down to the airlock. “I just need to rest and gain some strength. Having a physical form here is a tricky gift…I can’t access quintessence or practice shamanism like this, I’m really no better than a regular mortal. So it takes a good bit of strength to shed this shape.”

“It might be a while,” Keith frowned. “You really don’t look so hot.”

As they appeared at the Black Lion’s loading ramp, Shiro spotted them and started to jog over. He came to an abrupt stop when he saw the newcomer, then looked up at the Black Lion itself. He could sense Black’s absence and Green’s replacement, Keith was sure.

Shiro started moving again, coming to meet them and take over Onyx’s other side from Pidge. As soon as Shiro touched him he made a soft noise, as if he was going to be sick and had to fight back the urge.

“We had an incident,” Keith said tiredly.

“I can see that,” Shiro replied, regaining his composure and getting them moving toward the door. “The contamination is practically pouring off of you both.”

“Sorry,” Onyx mumbled tiredly. “I didn’t have time to shower between the mauling and…the second mauling.”

“There was also a stabbing,” Keith contributed.

“Yeah, that was _not_ cool,” Onyx agreed. “Hey, does anyone mind if I pass out? Just for a little bit? Thanks.”

His head rolled back and he went limp, and Keith had to struggle with his hold. Fortunately Shiro’s strength was far greater and he was able to support more of Onyx’s weight, pausing to shift him into a fireman’s carry and leave Keith to limp along with him and Pidge.

“What happened to him?” Shiro asked worriedly. “It takes a lot to take down something his size. Hunk and Adam said he tussled with a…runvilar? But something like that shouldn’t have a poison.”

“He was protecting me,” Keith answered, a wave of guilt washing over him.

He knew he owed Onyx is life, the Sentinel had risked his own to come down the incline and try to get him to safety. And if Onyx hadn’t dared to take on Black in the clearing, Keith never would have made it long enough for Pidge to get the Black Lion to him.

“Black, he…something happened,” he said quietly, the sharp sensation of betrayal returning. He had fought along with Black for more than a lifetime, he had _trusted_ him. And just like so many others, Black had stabbed him in the back. Literally this time. “He turned on us.”

“What?” Shiro asked sharply, slowing his walk to look at them.

“We found this crazy place, full of those formless things,” Pidge stepped in and Keith was thankful. He felt like he was out of breath already. “We all wanted to leave but Black got mad, he wanted to investigate. He just went nuts, he started babbling about power and sacrifice and stabbed Keith! He did some kind of alchemy and his hair turned white for a few seconds, but then he just…”

She made a *poof* motion with her hands.

“He turned into one of them,” Keith supplied for her. “It was like whatever he did burned him up from the inside, in less than a minute he wasn’t even recognizable. The Green Lion was out of power after the run-in with the runvilar, Pidge and Green managed to save me using the Black Lion instead. But not before Onyx had to get between Black and me and take a beating to save my ass.”

“We were too far out beyond the borders,” Pidge said. “The quintessence levels were high, but not enough to heal the damage fast enough. Green managed to close up Keith before he could bleed out, but she said she couldn’t fix whatever venom got into them. We need the White Lion for that, apparently.”

“Hm,” Shiro frowned as they reached the double doors that led to one of the office wings. From here, if they went upstairs they would find Shiro’s and Keith’s offices. But they went past the stairs, continuing through to the base proper. “So he gets to spend eternity out in the Beyond with all the other monsters.”

“Well…” Pidge said slowly, looking uncomfortable.

“Well?”

“He’s in the Green Lion,” Keith answered. “While Green was trying to save me, she wasn’t able to keep him out of both Lions. The Green one is up on the lunar surface, in the Schiaparelli crater.”

“This is a nightmare,” Shiro murmured.

“You’re telling me,” Keith answered quietly, absently picking at the sword hole in his undersuit. “I had to live it.”

Shiro looked down at him and sighed, shaking off what was bothering him.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, we need to make sure you’re okay. Come on, I need to get everyone together for a quick meeting and get you and this one checked out.”

“Green said we need the White Lion,” Pidge reminded him.

“Yes, I heard that the first time,” Shiro assured her. “Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll make an appearance.”

Keith got a weird feeling from the way Shiro said that, he was being very casual about the need for the presence of an otherworldly entity.

It was the last in a string of signs he had been desperately trying to ignore. In spite of everything they’d been through since first piling into the Blue Lion years ago, a part of him still clung to the idea that maybe when all of this was over life could go back to the way it was before.

He didn’t miss his life in foster care, but he did miss when things were simple. When it was him with his shack, watching the planes take off at the Garrison base across the desert.

It would be different this time around of course, because he was grown. That shack would be turned into a comfortable house, and although his father had passed his mother and great-uncle would be nearby. He had friends who would come by, he would be one of those people whose door was always open to entertain. Shiro was here now, he’d be comfortably settled in his home in town and available.

It was a stupid little daydream, but one that had powered Keith through the worst of what the war had to offer so far. All this change was just a blip on the radar, once it was handled then life could go back to normal. Admitting that nothing would ever be the same “normal” again would be giving up the only real life goal he’d ever had, and that was hard.

That stupid little daydream had been the wall he kept putting up between himself and the inconvenient facts that kept cropping up right in front of his face. Things like Allura telling him Shiro had transformed an entire mech the same way he knew Kuro had done. Like Shiro being able to hear Black’s words before they’d gone into the rift, where the Guardians’ ability to communicate was extended. Like his knowledge of the Golds, and belief that they would help them when in reality he shouldn’t have known anything about these rift races. Now his casual statement that the White Lion would give assistance, which followed on the heels of him being able to sense the change in the Black Lion’s live-in Guardian.

Keith’s little dream was built entirely on one specific thing, and that thing was Shiro. Shiro was the one constant, the single _good_ thing that had come from his rough past. Children grew up and made their own lives but the parents and siblings who had been there through all the changes were often the important foundations those lives were built on. Keith’s calm and peaceful return to “normalcy” depended on Shiro, the main adult in his life, the man who had practically raised him at a time when he’d desperately needed guidance, remaining unchanging and steadfast. He was the foundation this idealized vision of the future was built on.

Keith would always love him, no matter what, nothing would ever take away the fact that they were family whether blood claimed so or not. But the Shiro of today was very obviously no longer the Takashi Shirogane who had come to his school to recruit for the Garrison Academy so many years ago, and every new change Shiro went through was one more nail in the coffin holding the idea that life could ever go back to the way it was.

At this point, Keith knew, the last nail was already there. As much as he didn’t want to do it, it was time to grow up and accept that the universe would never be exactly the same as it was ever again. That didn’t mean it couldn’t be just as good, maybe even better, but it would be _different_. And different was frightening.

“Shiro.”

Keith stopped walking, and gently caught his brother’s arm to stop him as well. Pidge went on a few steps but slowed to a stop as well, looking back at them. It didn’t really matter if she was here or not, the results of the conversation were going to make their way to everyone eventually anyway.

“This White Lion, it’s the same as all the others, right?” It wasn’t really a question despite the phrasing, more of a reminder that he wasn’t stupid and that just because he’d been ignoring things didn’t mean he didn’t notice them. “The Guardians, the Reapers, those Formless. They all need something physical to latch onto if they’re going to survive here. Or, in Kuro’s case, they sort of mix until you don’t know where one ends and the other starts anymore. I know the White Lion isn’t in the Atlas, and that it hasn’t been in the Zero crystal at least since we got back from Colony One.”

Shiro didn’t say anything in response, but he did reply. It was in his expression, the way he took a deep breath and looked painfully guilty. He didn’t ask Keith what he was talking about, so he understood what he was getting at. And he didn’t deny it.

“So what does this mean?” Keith asked, feeling that last nail hammering tightly in as his childish future plans were buried for good. “When this is all over, you’ll be leaving? You’re going to go somewhere else? Back to the quintessence field or something?”

“Keith, no,” Shiro looked alarmed as he realized where Keith’s thoughts were headed. “That’s not what this means, not even close. You’re my brother, my family. I’m never going to just leave you behind no matter what changes, do you understand?”

“Yeah, well, this seems like a pretty big change,” Keith insisted. “Like, the life-changing kind.”

“It is, sort of,” Shiro supposed. “But I promise, I’m not going anywhere. Come on, I want to get you cleaned up and take a look at you, and then I want to have a meeting. We’ll talk then, I swear.”

He was sincere, and Shiro had never really lied to him. Not intentionally or maliciously, anyway. All Keith could do was accept the promise that Shiro wasn’t going to go anywhere and trudge on through the halls to the Atlas hangar.

By the time they got there, people were everywhere. The crew was disembarking, heading back to base offices to continue the clerical side of their duties while the Facilities staff boarded to take stock of supplies that had been used and see what needed replacing. Plant Operations staff were arriving, bringing pallets of hospital-grade cleaners in preparation to help with disinfecting the ship.

The other Paladins were gathered at the northern wall, near the stairs that led down to the labs and underground bunkers, finally having a chance to swap stories with the Sincline and MFE pilots. Adam wasn’t present, but Hunk and Lance spotted them and broke away from the others to come running.

“You’re back!” Lance said cheerfully, his bright tone at odds with all the bruises and scrapes. Keith and Pidge finally pulled off their helmets, taking deep breaths of non-recycled air as they got close. “What happened out there? Who’s that? Is he o—”

Lance and Hunk both skidded to a stop, staring at Keith. That caught Pidge’s attention and she turned around, her eyes going wide.

“What?” Keith asked, panic starting to rise. “What’s wrong?”

The vision of Black flashed through his head, the horrifying mutation he went through and the strange threads of black that had wormed their way across his skin. Keith touched his face, wondering what horrible changes this slow-working poison might have brought about.

The mix of his expression and panicked face-touching snapped Lance out of his surprise. He started laughing, and a little giggle escaped from Pidge too. Hunk wasn’t laughing at him, but he did let out a little sigh and shake his head, which meant that whatever they were looking at, it wasn’t terrible.

“What are you laughing at?” He asked Lance crossly. “If it’s the dirt, believe me, you don’t look so great either!”

“C’mere,” Lance chuckled, falling in beside him and tossing an arm around his neck to pull him along. “Come to the locker room real quick.”

Keith complied, starting to get irritated. Hunk and Pidge trailed along as they passed the others, who also paused and stared, and went into the busy locker room. There were a decent number of crew and pilots in there changing out of uniforms and showering, so they had to weave their way around them. None of them paid any attention to the Paladins, or even noticed that Pidge was with them here in the men’s area.

They reached the mirror and Lance pushed Keith forward, planting him in front of it.

“Look at you,” Lance cooed, reaching up to squeeze his cheeks. “You’re such a little baby face with all the grown-up Galra gone!”

Keith stared at the reflection in the mirror, briefly experiencing a disconnect between what he expected to see and what was in front of him. He grabbed a paper towel and wet it in the sink, quickly scrubbing away some of the dirt to get a clearer look.

His eyes were back to their original deep violet, the yellow tint that had developed in his sclera gone and replaced with untouched white. His skin was once again a light pink complexion, the purple it had taken on faded away, and the magenta streaks that had been running through his hair had deepened to a darker purple that was closer to the black. The stripes on his skin were still there but they were very faint, easy to miss or ignore if one wasn’t standing close.

He looked like he had two years ago, before he’d ever started down the Paladin road. There were traces of his mother’s coloring still there, but now they looked as if they were naturally developing as he matured instead of being forced to the surface by his quintessence use.

“…this is what happened back on that base,” he realized, leaning in close. “Back when I first ran into Macidus. “He hit me with a blast of druidic energy, it tore open the glove on the hand I was trying to block it with and turned my skin purple. Then a cannister broke and I was doused in clean quintessence, and my skin went back to normal.”

“It must have happened when we got out of our Lions at that landing point,” Hunk mused. “That was the only time we were exposed, right?”

“Hey, yeah,” Pidge said suddenly, running her hands over her arms and legs. “Now that you mention it…I feel great. All those bruises and gashes from the fight earlier, I think they’re gone!”

“Oh,” Hunk dropped down on the floor and fought his boot and greave off, pulling up the leg of his undersuit. “Hey, mine are gone too!”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Lance complained, letting go of Keith to look at them with his hands on his hips. “I’m still broken and sore!”

“Don’t worry, one of the healing pods will be free sooner or later,” Keith assured him. “They’ll definitely let you have a turn in one.”

“Great,” Lance said dully, giving two sarcastic thumbs up. “You know how I just love being shoved into those things.”

“Hey, guys,” Shiro called from behind them, clapping sharply for their attention. “Come on, out of here. Facilities cleared the Deck 11 locker rooms for use, go get cleaned up. Someone will be up with some clean casuals for now, when you’re done head over to my place. Adam and I are leaving now, we’ll already be there.”

“What about a debriefing?” Keith asked, looking back at him. “We need to go over what happened out there today.”

“We will,” Shiro promised. He leaned against a locker and looked around at them all. “Listen, I’m suspending your duties as of right now. Get cleaned up and get off this base…don’t stop to answer questions, don’t accept any orders. As of this moment, you’re not on active duty, not as soldiers and not as Paladins. We’ll talk at my place, after everyone’s clean and has something to eat. Got it?”

“Yes sir,” Pidge chirped, giving a half-hearted salute as she headed past him back out of the locker room, picking at her armor. “God, I can’t wait to get out of this…what even is that on here?”

“Wow, I didn’t realize how good food sounded until just now,” Hunk realized. “When was the last time we even ate?”

“Way too long ago,” Lance agreed, falling into step beside him as they followed Pidge. “I could eat a klamoral.”

“Klanmüirl!” Pidge called back.

“One of those too, probably,” Lance supposed.

When they were gone, Keith looked back at Shiro, who was still waiting for him.

“Come on,” Shiro urged, pushing away from the locker and gesturing back the way they’d come with his head. “Showers. The sooner the better, we both smell awful.”

Keith took one last look in the mirror, at his new old reflection, and followed. Shiro looked down at him, worried, as they left the locker room.

“Will you be okay until we’re home?” He asked, frowning. “We can go somewhere quiet and I can take a look at that injury now, if you need me to.”

“No,” Keith said quickly, shaking his head. Now that even more attention had been brought to it, the sheer amount of dirt and grime he was carrying around was starting to make his skin crawl. “I need to get clean. I’ll be okay until we get to your place.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, it hurts,” he admitted. “When it does, the pain makes it a little hard to breathe. But I’ll be okay for a little while longer.”

“Okay,” Shiro nodded as they reached where Coran was waiting. Everyone else had already dispersed, making good on the offer to get cleaned up and then flee from the base without looking back. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”

Keith nodded as well and left them, moving through the teeming crowds of soldiers to board the Atlas. There were so many people coming and going and he was so tired, he only realized as he stepped into the empty lift to go up to deck 11 that it was a huge weight off of him to be told to just…clean up and leave.

Don’t go to an office, don’t bother with paperwork. Don’t answer questions, don’t sit through a meeting. Just get a shower and get far away from everything.

And, he realized as his stomach growled slightly, Lance and Hunk were right. At this point, he could probably eat a klanmüirl too.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Yes, thank you,” Adam replied, shifting the phone to rest between his chin and shoulder while he scribbled down information. “No…I mean, yes, I know you appreciate it, but I still want you to take payment for doing this. Can you take a credit card over the phone since your website server went down? …oh, all right, that will work. Yes, thank you. You have a good afternoon as well.”

He hung up the phone and set it down just as he heard the shower turn off in the bathroom. Takashi came out of the master suite a minute later, a towel around his waist and thankfully smelling so much better.

“I tossed a pair of your jeans and a sweater in the dryer,” Adam advised as Takashi pulled open one of his dresser drawers. “They should be nice and warm by now.”

“Ooh,” Takashi’s little murmured noise of surprise was adorable as he grabbed some socks and boxers out of the dresser, tossing them on the bed on his way out of the bedroom. He left the door open as he went down to the laundry room, and even though it wasn’t meant for anybody else’s ears, Adam also heard the little sing-song words that followed. “Oooh, warm. Warm, warm, warm. Warm sweater.”

Adam rose from the bed and stretched, chuckling a little at how childlike and happy Takashi could be when he didn’t have thousands of eyes on him and the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was already showered and dressed in a pair of his own jeans and a hockey jersey, forgoing shoes in favor of padding out of the room in only socks. Takashi was just coming back as he was going out, hugging the hot clothes against him.

“I’m going downstairs, the kids will be straggling in sooner than later,” Adam told him. “I think I have what I need to make a crockpot of hot chocolate, might get that started.”

“God, that sounds good,” Takashi groaned, already happy just to not be hauling around eighty pounds of dirt and armor. “Did you find anywhere open for food?”

“Most places opened up in the last few hours,” Adam answered. “The damage here was pretty minimal, and almost none of it was in the city. The diner over on Terrace Avenue was willing to do one of their bulk tray specials on short notice, they feed about twelve people. He also wanted to send it over on the house after he found out who I was.”

“People throw a lot of free stuff at the Paladins,” Shiro sounded almost tired of it when he said it. “It gets old after a while. Especially since you know most of them can’t afford to just be giving things away for free while the planet’s in recovery.”

“Don’t worry, we’re paying for it,” Adam gave him a kiss on the cheek. “The delivery drivers will bring a credit card scanner. Go get dressed. I’m making myself coffee, do you want some?”

He was already down the hall as he asked, just barely hearing Takashi’s “yes, please!” as he started down the stairs. Adam practically skipped down, running his hands along the bannister and wall, stopping occasionally to look at one of the pictures or knick-knacks he’d hung on the wall.

There hadn’t really been time to decorate yet, they’d only barely just arrived. Many of their things were still being moved from the storage unit, and those that already had been were, in many cases, still in boxes. A good bit of furniture wasn’t even set to arrive until Saturday, he’d had to push back the delivery when this whole diplomacy tour had been announced.

But it was his new home. Only renting for now so they could get into it quicker, but sooner or later he’d start the process of buying. He’d only been here a short time but he had already decided that, this place had everything he wanted and he was ready to settle in.

He loved it even more now that he could_ see_ it. He knew what everything looked like already, but the difference between a digital image and natural eyesight was light years apart, even given how advanced Galra technology was. There simply was no replacement for the sharpness of the visual or the clarity of color, and his with his implants everything had possessed a sort of flat quality as if he were seeing it on a screen. The binocular nature of their placement had only offered a fraction of the depth perception he had now, and he had been forced to rely heavily on the various information readings that had always been in the corner of his field of vision to fully gauge what he was looking at.

Having his eyesight back was…freedom. It felt like he was no longer hidden behind a screen, no longer locked in the box he’d been shoved in when he’d been taken captive. He finally, really felt free.

The lack of furniture was going to be a bit of a problem, but no more so than back during their little surprise wedding. The table and chairs was still set up, there had been no reason to take it down until their dining set arrived, so there was still plenty of room for eating. He had gotten dishes last week and had made sure that he’d purchased a set with enough table settings for entertaining, especially knowing how many people Takashi would undoubtedly have coming and going from their house on any given holiday.

Adam did a check in the cabinet, realizing he hadn’t bought mugs. The tea cups that had come with the dishes would just have to do, he pulled those out and set them out on the counter. It only took a few minutes to put on a pot of coffee and dump the ingredients for hot chocolate in the crock pot, then he went back upstairs.

Takashi found him half-buried in the linen closet, pulling out blankets and quilts. Most of them were still in the packaging since they were new. He made Takashi carry them downstairs and take them into the living room, to open them up and spread them around on the floor. The new TV had only just been hung over the fireplace before they’d left, so that at least gave them something to hook the laptop Takashi had stolen from the communications room up to.

When Adam was done digging a bag of marshmallows out of the pantry he met up with Takashi in the hall, taking stock of the situation.

The house was warm, a pleasant bastion from the icy winter afternoon outside. Hot chocolate was warming, and they’d grabbed a case of water and a case of cola from the gas station on their way back. Food was coming, plates were set, and all the living room needed was some of the new pillows stolen from the guest bedrooms to make it a comfortable meeting place.

“I think that’s it,” Adam decided, catching Takashi around the middle and bringing him to a stop as he passed. “Should I go check on Onyx?”

Their unexpected guest was currently fast asleep in one of those guest rooms. Takashi had not wanted to leave him anywhere he would be bothered by Garrison staff, feeling that Onyx was more of a Paladin issue than an Earth one. He’d gotten the Sentinel settled while Adam had been cleaning up.

“No, he’s all right,” Takashi assured him. “I did what I could for him…he’s definitely not going to drop dead anytime soon, but it’s going to take me some time to figure out how to clean out the corruption. That kind of thing works fast, it gets everywhere and it’s not easy to get out. But he was well enough to get cleaned up before he went back to sleep.”

“Is he going to be okay, though?” Adam asked critically. There weren’t exactly any books he could go pick up that explained the care and feeding of quintessence field people. “Will we need to get him back to the rift soon?”

“I think he’s good. He’s an adult, he spends most of his life in one reality or another. Being in the quintessence field is good for him, but he’s like a dolphin with air…he only needs to go back every now and then to stay in peak condition. Letting him rest here for a day or two will be fine.”

The doorbell rang and Adam let him go, sending him to the kitchen to get their coffee while he went to the door. He braced himself against the cold he knew would come, quickly opening the door and stepping back so Allura, Veronica, and Romelle could hurry inside.

They had gone a bit beyond he could see, having gone directly back home to clean up and put on their own clothes instead of the Garrison-issued sweatclothes that had been provided. He couldn’t really say he’d blame them, if he was a woman he’d probably prefer yoga pants and an oversized sweater too.

They were kicking snow off their boots in the foyer, and Allura was the first one to look up and see him. When she did her eyes went wide, and she let out a scream and grabbed his face with both hands.

“What!?” Takashi’s voice called out in a panic. He appeared in the doorway, looking for the problem. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh my God!” Allura exclaimed, squishing Adam’s cheeks as she turned his face toward Takashi, as if he hadn’t noticed yet. “Oh my God!”

“I think that was a pleased scream,” Adam told him.

Allura started bouncing up and down, looking back and forth between them with such a happy expression and a loss for words it made Takashi start laughing. She realized she was making a scene and blushed, letting him go and taking a step back. Romelle moved in to give Adam a tight hug while Veronica was a little more restrained, looking pleasantly surprised without resorting to assault.

“Long story,” Takashi said when Allura turned to him. “Hot chocolate?”

“Yes!” Allura managed to get out. “Oh! Yes!”

The girls followed Takashi to the kitchen, and as they went Adam realized that Allura had cut her hair to her shoulders rather than pulling what was left of it up. Veronica or Romelle had likely trimmed off most of the damaged length, and it was pinned back out of her face until she could get a salon appointment.

He went upstairs to grab the extra pillows, and was just dropping them in the living room when Hunk and Pidge arrived. Keith and Lance were just pulling up as they came in, so everyone waited for them before heading for the kitchen to indulge in the offered hot chocolate.

Keith, Adam noticed, seemed to have been affected by their jaunt outside of their lions as well. It was no longer easy to pick him out as half-Galra, though a tiny bit of the coloring was still there if one looked carefully.

It was unfortunate that direct contact with the quintessence field usually resulted in overexposure and death. They were potentially looking at a literal cure-all for sickness and injury throughout the universe, and the main side effect of it was that in most cases it was lethal.

Adam took a minute to move the shoes and boots everyone had kicked off away from the door, laying them out in the unfurnished formal sitting room where the circulating air could better dry them. He was about to go join everyone in the kitchen when there was another knock at the door.

He assumed it was the food being delivered. He was not expecting to see a ghost.

Curtis stood there, smartly dressed in slacks and his familiar dark blue peacoat, bouncing a little against the cold with his hands shoved into his pockets. But even with the coat wrapped tightly around him from the cold, Adam could see it wasn’t the Curtis he knew. It was the Curtis he remembered, tall and healthy and strong.

Except for the molten gold eyes and the hair that glimmered in the afternoon sun. They were new.

Adam locked up, unable to react. The silence made Curtis shift a little, uncomfortable. Scratch the back of his head in that way he did when he’d been caught doing something stupid and was embarrassed.

“Um,” Curtis said eloquently, searching for the right words. He settled for opening his arms wide and giving a pained smile. “Surprise!”

That was definitely Curtis. It didn’t matter what color his hair was, or how different he appeared now than he had last time Adam had seen him. This was not just a familiar body being toted around by a foreign entity, this shuffling and sputtering and these mannerisms were Curtis’. Adam knew Curtis, and _this_ was Curtis.

He suddenly understood how Allura had felt a few minutes ago, why she’d been unable to do anything but make a noise and grab him. That was all he managed to do now, letting out an undignified squeak and grabbing the other man in a tight hug.

The frailty was gone, the arms that squeezed him back had strength and substance. And the tone of voice Curtis took with him next was a return to the days when Adam had just been an idiot cadet under his watch.

“You’re not wearing shoes or a coat. It’s freezing out here, you need to go back inside.”

“I’m a grown ass man, I’ll freeze to death on my front step if I want to,” Adam said petulantly into the peacoat.

Curtis scoffed. The hug became tighter, and Adam found himself lifted off his feet as his friend shuffled them forward into the foyer. The chill subsided quickly as he kicked the door shut behind them.

“Are you going to let me go at some point?” Curtis asked.

“No.”

“Never?”

“No.”

“SHIRO! I need you to come and get your husband!”

Adam still didn’t let go, but he did turn his head so he could see Takashi come down the hallway from the kitchen. When he saw what was going on he broke into a grin, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

“This is adorable. I need to get a picture of this for our Christmas cards.”

“I hope you’re still laughing when you realize that I’ll be sleeping between you two tonight,” Curtis warned.

“Okay, and that’s enough of that,” Takashi decided immediately, pushing away from the wall to hook Adam under his arms and tug him back. Adam let himself be pulled away, but only barely. “Let’s get everyone into the living room. We need to get some information straight right away.”

The fact that Curtis was still alive was definitely information Adam would have liked to have had earlier. He wanted to be mad that he hadn’t been told, but the strange coloring was enough to tell him this was a delicate situation. Takashi had come clean to him back in the hospital about this link with the White Lion, and it appeared that at some point Curtis had made the same deal with the Gold…Adam just hoped that he was going to get to hear reasons soon, because his feelings were a little bit hurt at being left so far out of such important loops.

Curtis hung up his coat, and he and Adam went into the living room while Shiro went to gather everyone else. As they came in and found Curtis their reactions were mixtures of happiness and shock, with poor Allura having another near-meltdown when she came in.

It might have been annoying, if Adam didn’t know her history. With all of the loss she’d experienced in such a condensed amount of time, these survivals and little victories were the bright spots a person like her needed in order to tell herself they could win if they just kept going.

It was minor chaos as everyone settled in. A few patio chairs had been brought in but they were reserved for the two hosts, and Adam went to grab another one for Curtis. The others playfully fought over the best pillows and the best spots, and Shiro tried multiple times to call the group to order. But everyone was tired and their attention spans shot, and having a moment to just be in the presence of their friends without imminent death hanging over them was riling them up.

Adam let Takashi struggle for a little bit, then put his fingers to his mouth and gave a sharp, shrill whistle.

“Settle down,” he said firmly, pulling out the teacher voice. “Food’s on the way, and we want to get this debriefing over with before it gets here so everyone can eat.”

That got cooperation. Everyone quieted, and Adam gestured for Takashi to continue.

“Thanks,” he said dryly before turning to the group. “Okay, here’s the deal…I’m going to go through a small list of basic facts that will answer some of the questions we have. Then I’m going to show a video that will answer some other questions we have. Then you’ll ask some questions I have the answers to, then you’ll ask questions I don’t have any answers to, then we’ll have dinner and everyone will go home mildly confused instead of completely at a loss for what’s going on.”

“I feel enlightened already,” Hunk grinned, getting a giggle from Pidge and a snicker from Lance. Adam shot the three of them a look and they quieted again.

Takashi shook his head and pulled over his chair, turning it around backwards so he could sit on it and lean against the back, facing everyone.

“Okay, item number one…Curtis survived the trip into the quintessence field. Item number two, Ryou also survived. He was a little worse for wear and is sleeping it off in Curtis’ quarters on the Atlas right now. He may be out of commission for a couple days before anyone sees him again.”

Adam felt a rush of relief when he heard that. Not just for his own sake—he liked Kuro, personally—but for Takashi’s and Curtis’. The others all looked pleased at this news as well, but Keith in particular looked more relieved than the others. Adam supposed that was only to be expected; Kuro shared a lot of qualities with Takashi, it wasn’t surprising that Keith would get attached to him very quickly.

“Item number three is this video,” Takashi continued, taking a small drive out and plugging it into the laptop, which was currently using the TV as a separate monitor. “This was a message left for Lotor by Ryou…it explains a lot of things that you’ve all got bits and pieces of already. Technically, it wasn’t meant for anybody’s eyes except Lotor’s…but the situation’s changed drastically since it was made, so I’ll take full responsibility if he’s angry that it was shared.”

Adam had already seen the video. Takashi had seen it as a way to answer some of the questions he had about his newly bonded status, and it had been…informative. He knew Lance, at least, had already seen it as well, but he watched the whole thing through again with rapt attention and no interruptions.

When it was over, Takashi turned off the TV. He stayed quiet for a minute and let what they’d seen soak in.

“So that’s what this is?” Keith was the first one to speak up. “This is what happened with you and the White Lion?”

“It is.” Takashi didn’t flinch from the question. He nodded, looking Keith in the face and telling him the truth. “The full story is, back on Colony Two, Honerva won. She killed Lotor, just like Ryou said she would do, and her ship used that cannon that was used on Blue to bring down all of our side’s ships. Allura and I were both brought down, we were being hauled away to her lab and both our soldiers and the Alteans were being taken prisoner to be tortured, killed, or sent to the arena. Sam and Colleen Holt self-destructed the ships to avoid that…everyone was killed.”

This admission sent a chill down Adam’s spine. Anybody from those ships falling into Honerva’s hands, but especially Takashi, terrified him like nothing else. And the idea that it had gotten so far was a horror he hadn’t seen coming.

“So what happened?” Hunk asked, concerned. “Obviously something did, I mean, how’d you guys get back?”

“Right before the explosion hit me, I…the White Lion, I mean…stopped time in the bubble around the planet.”

“Like the Gold did for us on that shadow layer,” Lance realized.

Takashi shot a questioning glance at Curtis, who waved at him to continue. Takashi would get a chance to ask his questions after they covered the Atlas’ side of things.

“He managed to freeze everything at the last possible second, but he had to wait for Honerva to retreat away from the explosions. Lotor had set up charges that would rupture the whole planet, so she ditched out as soon as she thought the rest of us were doomed. But White couldn’t turn back time himself because he didn’t have a physical presence here, and these Guardians need a physical presence to do things on that scale.”

“Oh!” Pidge suddenly exclaimed, shooting up on her knees and punching Keith in the shoulder. “Bob! Bob!”

“Will you calm down?” Keith hissed, rubbing his shoulder. “I swear to God, the less sleep you get the more of your mind you lose!”

“Bob?” Lance groaned, letting himself fall forward to stretch out on the floor on his stomach. “I hate that guy. What’s he got to do with anything?”

“First of all, Onyx told us that he’d recently been speaking to one of the three gods these Quintessi follow…The Mage,” Keith answered. “Apparently he had to wait, because this Mage was busy helping White keep time frozen on Colony Two. Second of all, he told us this Mage was Bob.”

Everyone fell silent. Adam looked around at the stunned and confused faces and leaned in close to Takashi.

“Who the hell is Bob?”

“I’ve never met him personally, but apparently he’s…er…” Takashi hesitated.

“Oh. A bag of dicks?” Adam supplied.

“Sure, that sounds right. I’ve never met the Mage personally either, but, again, that also sounds right.”

“I’m lost on the talk about gods,” Veronica admitted, raising her hand. “Is this one of those questions you don’t have answers to?”

“No, I can answer that one,” Takashi replied, motioning for everyone to quiet down. “The three gods created the three races. There’s a goddess of life, a god of death, and an intermediate god of everything in between. This in-between god is called The Mage.”

“But they’re not really gods,” Pidge said helpfully. “They’re creators, but they’re potentially higher beings that just come from a different plane. They’re called gods because the Quintessi don’t fully understand their abilities, not because they’re some faceless, judgmental deities.”

“Oh,” Veronica frowned. “Okay then.”

“I know, it’s a lot to take in,” Takashi agreed. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to make everything as simple as I can, but the situation just isn’t simple.”

“So Bob helped us,” Allura frowned, looking to Takashi. “He helped hold the time freeze that the White Lion put into place…that’s just so strange, given how he treated us.”

“He’s a chaotic god,” Takashi shrugged, not sure how else to answer that. “I’m just glad he helped.”

“And what happened after he helped?” Adam asked, his anxiety already at steadily growing levels after learning that everybody had almost died.

“I…the White Lion and I,” Takashi had to correct himself again, split his own person into two so that everyone else would understand. “Came face to face. He wanted me to escape, to get back here and help. And I couldn’t live with the idea of being the only survivor, so…”

“So you gave him a physical presence here so he, or rather you, could turn back time,” Romelle finished for him. Takashi nodded.

“Lotor is aware of this, by the way, he was part of the conversation. Because he’d already died, his bonded core was disconnected from his body and not affected. We were able to come up with a plan that would stop the battle from turning in the enemy’s favor, and then I turned everything back.”

He gestured down to himself, sitting back a little on the chair.

“In this form, I have a pretty deep bag of alchemical tricks,” he admitted. “I was able to gain control of two of their Komar mechs and manipulate them to be of use to us just like I did to the Atlas. Lotor and Allura took out the cruiser and its cannon, James Griffin managed to sneak onto another cruiser and get some of our soldiers aboard. This time around, we won, and with minimal casualties. But bonding has a cost, usually a person will sleep off the change for a few days because it is so draining. I couldn’t do that, so by the time the fight ended I passed out in the mech and had to be brought back ahead of everyone else. That’s the point when everything else started.”

“I can explain what went on over on this side of the galaxy during the fight,” Curtis finally spoke up for the first time, drawing eyes to him. He was settled in his chair in a back corner, legs crossed and hands folded quietly in his lap. “Unless someone else wants to.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Hunk answered tiredly, falling back to lean back on his elbows.

“I think you’re probably the best person to explain it at this point,” Adam answered carefully. “Since you’re going to understand more than us.”

Curtis nodded, turning his attention more to Takashi and the Sincline pilots, who hadn’t been present.

“THEMIS has been in chaos since the invasion took out so many of its forces,” he said. “There are power vacuums and infighting, and the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing. One faction decided they wanted to get their hands on the Atlas and get their own pilots into the Lions, but to do that they needed some of the pilots to be killed by “outside” forces they could turn into a faceless enemy that would let them use fear to seize power. This culminated in Laurentia staging a takeover of the Garrison base and shutting down the satellite shield, because the nature of the shield is only currently known to the Paladins themselves and a few close allies. Laurentia was under the impression that it was a spy satellite system, and wanted it shut down to hide the movement of forces on his side.

“Once he basically announced to the universe where the Atlas was and that we were unprotected, Honerva picked up on the transmission and sent three upgraded Komar mechs. The mechs were piloted by formless using the bodies of drained and deceased Alteans. They have more experience with Voltron because they’ve fought it before…ten thousand years ago. They were initially playing a cat-and-mouse game to try and test the pilots, but were interrupted when Ryou stole one of the Komari that Lotor had been researching and joined the fight.

“The Komari are built to use their pilots as batteries, just like Voltron. But the Lions are tempered by Guardians, who make sure that power is filtered safely through the pilots’ cores from the quintessence field. The Komari have no intelligent beings in them, filtering power safely is the sole responsibility of the pilot. That means if the pilot isn’t a highly trained alchemist, druid, or shaman who knows how to pull quintessence from the environment, their own life force will be directly drained.”

“That was why Kuro got so exhausted so fast?” Lance asked.

“Initially? Yeah,” Curtis nodded. “He’s an extremely skilled druid, he really is, but his confidence was badly shaken by the abuse at Honerva’s hands. He was afraid to use what he had because he didn’t want to turn into her, and end up doing more damage than good. He was also already very drained from all of his time spent in this reality, without getting a recharge from the quintessence field. He had to tap a slightly different power source to turn things around, which he did by adjusting the mech to his own specifications and then separating a single layer of reality from Earth and dragging the enemy along with it.”

“A layer of reality?” Allura asked. Takashi’s eyebrows were raised, showing he already knew what this meant, but Allura probably wouldn’t have heard of it. “How does that work?”

“Reality is made up of layers of the fifteen elements,” Curtis answered. “Ryou was born as a half-Iron, half-Bronze. His native elements are Shadow and Lightning, he separated the Shadow layer out.”

“It was crazy,” Lance told her, looking up at them. “We have to show you some of the video so you believe it, nothing anywhere was casting a shadow. Laws of physics? Boom. Right out the window.”

“Laws of physics only work when all fifteen layers are connected and everything can function according to laws,” Curtis pointed out. “The separate layer meant that the Formless could destroy whatever they wanted, and as long as the layer was put carefully back into place the damage wouldn’t carry over. But Ryou was losing strength, so the five Guardians who were here joined up to wrap their native layers around his and put everything back. It’s far more complicated than that, but that’s the simplified version. They were having trouble doing so, but the Gold did a tricky bit of very illegal time rewinding of his own and they got everything put together. Unfortunately one of the Formless survived the return and activated its self-destruct.

“Three of the Lions were down, two were almost out of power. Ryou knew his pilot capsule was built to withstand the explosion since the young Altean pilot of the first one had survived, so he took the self-destructing mech up into the atmosphere himself and shielded the planet when it went off. Unfortunately, his capsule didn’t fully disconnect from his mech, and a large portion of it remained intact. Enough to keep drawing power even though he had nothing left to give which left us at the point where Allura, Veronica, and Romelle returned with Shiro.

“I remembered walking in on a conversation regarding a rift gate having been found and what it was and I knew about the shuttle, so I released the Gold from Allura’s lab and volunteered to let it use me as a host to get Ryou to the rift before he was completely drained. It was a very successful trip, obviously. And I don’t think I have to tell you that I didn’t dye my hair…it was a mutual decision that you guys might need a little bit of extra help over here.”

“So…you’re the Gold now,” Hunk said out loud what everyone had probably been thinking from the moment Kuro’s video had made clear that people and these quintessence creatures bonded into one. “And Shiro’s the White. And Lotor’s a…Silver? And Kuro’s an Iron. Or a Bronze. Or both. And Onyx is an…Onyx, but he’s not a person, he’s just Like That. Which means we’re all caught up on everything up to the point when we went into the Rift.”

“And I don’t think we’re going to go any further tonight,” Takashi warned, stopping Hunk there. “If Keith and Pidge are comfortable talking about it in their own time that’s fine, but I think getting brought up to speed just this far is enough for now.”

Allura started to protest, but Takashi gently stopped her.

“We’re all tired,” he pointed out. “Exhausted. And we may just be sitting here casually talking, but going over everything is still emotionally taxing. I know I said there would likely be questions, but I think I want to stop everything right here. Everyone knows what everyone else was doing during the fighting and now everyone knows that some of us are a little bit…different. I think that’s enough. Let’s let it go, and after everyone’s had time to recover we’ll revisit with all the questions. Does that sound fair?”

Romelle’s response was a wide yawn. Allura deflated a little, nodding.

“Rest first does sound like a good idea,” she gave it. “I think my mind is already pushed beyond its limit.”

The doorbell rang and Adam rose, excusing himself. As he left the room he could hear Takashi quietly reassuring them all that they weren’t done, and that he just wanted to but as many of their fears to rest as he could so they could have a few days of real peace.

Two men from the diner were there with steaming trays, and Adam directed them in to where the table was set up. He ran his credit card on their scanner and left an excessively large tip for the whole staff in gratitude, then quickly got the trays set out and opened and returned to the living room.

“Time to eat,” he announced. “Let’s wrap it up.”

“I think that’s about it,” Takashi answered, just as eager to get something to eat as the rest of them. “All right…get some food then go home and rest. You’re all officially off duty for a week, I don’t want any of you within a hundred yards of the base for at least seven full days, understand? Turn off your phones if you have to, you’re not on call. No contact with anyone but your friends and family. There is no such thing as an emergency until I call you back in.”

Adam stood back as everyone scrambled to their feet and went to go sit in the dining room. Curtis stayed back with him, waiting until everyone else was seated. They both quickly grabbed plates and then excused themselves to the kitchen, and just that fast Adam could hear the group devolve from serious military debriefing to exhausted kids. The noise still reached them in the kitchen, but the laughter and chatter were pleasant noises.

“So what happens now?” Adam asked, grabbing them each a bottle of water before joining Curtis at the breakfast bar.

“What happens with what?”

“Your job,” Adam clarified. “Your life. Your relationship.”

“Oh,” Curtis looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know yet. I won’t know until Ryou wakes up.”

“Well, are you going to keep going with it?” Adam asked. “It’s just…I’ve never seen you be serious with anyone. I can’t help but think you were only as serious as you were with Kuro because you knew it wasn’t going to last. You’re…not a man whose been known to do well with commitment. And if I’m allowed to be honest? I don’t get the feeling that Kuro is, either.”

“I can’t really tell you what’s going to happen,” Curtis admitted. “I can only tell you what I think. I _think_ that I love him and that he knows that, and that it scares him. I think that, given the prospect of actually getting serious with me, he might run away. He cares, but he’s not in love. All I can really do is stick around and see if he’ll settle in enough and get comfortable enough with a real life here that he’s willing to let that caring become something else.”

Adam couldn’t help but smile a little, not having ever thought he’d hear anything like that out of his friend’s mouth.

“He’s definitely changed you,” he noted. “You were always a guy who went after what you wanted, and if you couldn’t have it you gave up and moved on.”

“And I’ll move on again if I have to,” Curtis sighed. “I don’t want to, but I will if that’s what he wants. I want him to be happy, that’s the bottom line. Whether that’s with me or not is for him to decide, but I’ll accept whatever decision he makes. Me not being the one he wants isn’t going to make me regret choosing to do this.”

That was…sweet. And although Adam may not have ever expected to hear him say any such thing, it was still undeniably a very Curtis thing to say.

“And what about the job?” Adam asked. “You put in for your retirement when all this started to go south.”

“I know. And I think that I’ll have to take a few days to really consider what I want to do about that,” Curtis admitted. “The military has been my life for a long time. I’ve been steeped in Special Forces since I was barely out of my teens…but THEMIS has changed, and so has the Garrison since the occupation. I’m not sure yet if I can keep being a part of what they are now.”

Also very understandable. Curtis was a man with principles, very strong ones, it was part of what had made him so successful in black ops in the first place. Having his job suddenly begin to go against those principles…Adam couldn’t say which one would ultimately win out, but he wouldn’t bet money on the job.

Adam quickly cleaned his plate, surprising even himself with his appetite. Curtis’ plate was just about empty as well when he got up to refill his water bottle, and if the others were even half as hungry he knew he wasn’t going to have to worry about leftovers. He took their empty dishes and put them in the dishwasher, and caught Curtis glancing at his watch.

“Takashi said he’s going to need a few days to really sleep off this change, whatever that means,” Adam noted. “I’m guessing you need to get home for the same reason.”

“I’ve put it off as long as I can,” Curtis said apologetically. “But it’s taking a lot out of me to stay awake.”

“It’s okay. Are you going home, or are you going back to the Atlas?”

“Ryou’s going to be dead to the world for a few more days at least,” Curtis answered. “Nobody needs to be there yet. I’m going to head home and at least get a good six hours or so before I let my sisters come over. I gave them a call to let them know I was okay, but they’re obviously freaking out a little. They’re going to want to come see me, and then they’re going to want answers.”

“What are you going to tell them?” Adam wondered.

“That I needed to help with communications with the Atlas or something,” Curtis said, making a face. “That I got caught up helping the Paladins with something and got exposed to the quintessence field in the process, and that it put me in remission. They don’t understand enough about any of it for me to need too much detail, I just need to act like I don’t really know a lot about it either.”

“Yeah, you’re going to need at least six to eight hours just to deal with that conversation,” Adam agreed as he walked Curtis to get his coat. As they stepped outside, he pulled him into another tight hug. This one was more brief, and he let go without being forced. “Are you okay to drive? Want me to get you a cab?”

“No, I’ll be okay,” Curtis smiled, pulling his coat tight. “I lucked out and got a few hours’ sleep before the Atlas came back to Earth, I’ll get home fine. You get some rest, you need it too.”

He walked down the drive to his car, pausing before climbing inside.

“Oh, and Adam? Nice eyes,” he grinned. “I’m happy for you. You really have no idea.”

Adam couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his features as Curtis climbed into the car and pulled away. He hugged himself a little against the cold as he went back inside, quietly closing the door and moving from the quiet of the chilly afternoon to the pleasant sounds of life filling the house. Leaning back against the closed door, he took a deep breath and looked around the foyer.

He had his freedom again, and he had a home now. A real home, already filled with the sounds of laughter and happiness. The last few days had been very hard, but he was on the other side of it now and, at least for the moment, the worst was over and the only news they had was decent or good news.

And, for the first time since Adam could remember, there wasn’t a shadow hanging over his shoulder. The tangled and angry knots of his past had been unwound, their heavy weight no longer dragging him down. He had the answers he’d always been looking for, finally, and even if he didn’t especially like them they were still freeing.

He didn’t have to look back anymore, he had no reason to. He could look forward, take his identity and decide what to do with it on his own terms.

Adam locked the door and pushed away from it, following the sounds of happy voices through the house to the dining room. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen down the road, but he knew that the future started here.


	19. Chapter 19

** _A couple years ago:_ **

“Oh, very serious.”

Keith gripped the edge of the podium in front of him, only the fact that he was wearing his gloves stopping his nails from digging into the surface. He held his breath as he watched Pidge carefully lining up her shot on the miniature golf course, a faint flutter of hope in his chest.

Projectiles were her thing, and if anyone could line up a decent shot it would be her.

They had been whispering back and forth throughout this fever dream of a game show, trying to figure out how they’d gotten here and how to get out. It was like being in a house of horrors, with its constant, eerie laugh track even though there was no actual living audience and the way this Bob character kept speaking toward a single camera to their right.

There wasn’t anybody actually working the camera, it was just there. It followed the face of whoever was speaking, which made them assume that somebody must be watching from somewhere. The question was who, and what benefit they got from having the Paladins so confused and lost.

Keith and Pidge had decided that the camera was what they needed to focus on if they could get a chance. If they could ruin that, then nobody watching meant no point in continuing this charade. They could, potentially, find out who was so perversely set on having them play out this weird little fantasy that they’d even go so far as to replicate their Galra enemies by hologram.

That was one of their theories, anyway. Hologram tech similar to what Pidge’s armor could create had to be the answer to the Zarkon question, because obviously there was no way he, Haggar, and Lotor could actually have been here.

“The hole is over there,” Bob said helpfully, trying to prod Pidge into acting before she was ready. She ignored him, using the club in her hands to take visual measurements and make calculations.

Then she fired her shot, and Keith wasn’t disappointed. The ball flew directly at the camera, cracking the glass and then ricocheting off to hit Bob himself and knock him out of his chair. He landed close enough for her to pounce and she didn’t hesitate, body slamming him.

“Let us go, NOW!” She demanded angrily.

Keith instinctively tried to jump the podium and run to help her, but whatever was being used to lock their legs in place was keeping him down. He struggled, trying to rip himself free so hard he could feel himself nearly pulling his knee out of place.

There was a flashing red light and a loud alarm, and he had less than a second to be confused before a bright flash blinded him. As he rubbed the stars from his eyes, he found all five Paladins once again back behind their podiums, with everything back exactly the way it had been. The camera was once again trained on them, whole and unbroken.

_That isn’t possible. There’s no way any of this can be possible._

The only explanation he could come up with was that Bob was a skilled druid. Or perhaps he was a rogue alchemist, did they even know if it was only Alteans in the whole universe who could practice alchemy?

Well, no, there was another explanation. But that explanation was extremely frightening.

“It looks like the Paladins have just made it to the final round!” Bob announced, to the delight of the creepy, nonexistent audience.

“…what the…?” Over in the middle of the group, Lance had been inexplicably transported from the strange container he’d been locked into back at his spot behind his podium. The confusion he voiced echoed what Keith was feeling.

“Okay. I know I’ve said it before,” Hunk said, defeated. “Many times. But this is the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Keith glanced down and could see the shocked look on Allura’s face. Given that she was a woman who had battled druids and had known several other alchemists, Keith’s stomach sank as he realized that if this were either one of those magics she would have known.

This wasn’t either. This was something bigger, something that they weren’t capable of understanding, something that was toying with them because it could and it knew they had no possible way to stop it.

“One of you will now be allowed to leave the game,” Bob announced as he floated over to them. “The rest of you will be staying here with me forever.”

Keith felt a chill run down his spine at those words, at odds with the colorful, cheerful surroundings of this fake place. This thing, whatever it was, was absolutely a real threat and he believed what Bob said. Would they be here literally forever? That was probably just artistic language. The more likely scenario was that anyone who remained trapped here was going to die.

“You have blazzle hoochas to write down your choice for who should get to escape on the screen in front of you,” Bob announced, backing away as dividers rose up between them. “Go!”

If this wasn’t alchemy or druidism, the last explanation was the most likely one. The mythologies of Earth were filled with creatures who twisted their victims’ senses and lured them to their deaths, it would be irresponsible to assume that no such things might exist outside of their solar system. Perhaps they were caught up by such a creature now, trapped in a group hallucination or hypnosis. They had seen before that the Black Lion could create an astral plane and pull people in, maybe there was a living creature that could do the same. When it was done toying with them it would probably just consume its victims.

But the fact that it concocted this little pocket of space meant that it was intelligent. And if it was intelligent, maybe it could be bargained with.

Keith started to write Lance’s name as soon as his pen touched the screen. That was the obvious choice to him, he was certain everyone else’s vote would be the same. Lance was Hunk’s best friend, Pidge’s brother figure, and Allura seemed to have some kind of feelings for him. Keith didn’t trust Bob to actually live up to his word, but surely if one of them was voted unanimously that could be used to try and make him follow through.

Lance was the best choice for them to get out of here because of his tenacity as well. When he wanted something he was relentless, and he wouldn’t stand down until he figured out how to save the rest of them. The Red Lion was the fastest and most battle-ready, if it came down to a fight then he was the best armed out of all of them.

At least, that was what Keith told himself. That was how he justified his decision, it let him push down and ignore the fact that his feelings were far beyond comradery.

He got as far as “La” and stopped writing, the feeling of guilt overwhelming.

Yes, Lance was the most logical choice to go, at least in his mind. Yes, Lance was the one he wanted out of here and safe, a personal choice he knew actually had fairly selfish motives. But as badly as he wanted the Blue Paladin to be the one to go, writing one name to be released felt like he was writing four names to be kept.

That was basically what this was, wasn’t it? This question wasn’t so much “who do you think should be set free” as it was “who are you willing to sacrifice?”

When the question was asked like that, there was only one answer Keith was able to give. He crossed out the “La” that he’d written and hesitated for a moment, then carefully printed out his response.

_I volunteer to stay, let everyone else go._

If this thing was going to kill someone, Keith hoped the promise of having one victim who wouldn’t fight back would outweigh the idea of having four victims who would give more trouble than they were worth. In the end, he was the least valuable Paladin, and the least valuable person here.

Pidge, Hunk, and Lance had families waiting for them back on Earth. They had plans and futures. Keith had his mother, but deep down he knew that eventually that would change. As long as there was a war she would eventually be called back to the Blade, and she would hesitate less this time now that he was grown. Shiro was back—the real Shiro—which meant the Black Lion had another tried and true pilot already waiting in the wings. Allura was absolutely necessary to victory, he knew that deep down, and key to ending the suffering of billions of people across the universe.

Everyone who went into battle didn’t always come back, Keith was well aware of that. But he was going to do everything in his power to make sure the people he cared about made it back.

There was a ‘ding’ sound and the dividers dissolved. Keith’s pen disappeared and he looked pensively down the line at the others.

“Hunk, let’s start with you,” Bob decided. “Who’d you vote for?”

One by one, Keith listened to the answers. He was surprised, to say the least, because none of the responses any of his friends gave made sense. Not to him, at least. It made him wonder if he actually knew them as well as he’d come to believe he did.

Hunk chose Allura, which Keith couldn’t fathom. Lance had been his best friend since they were young, with Pidge in at close second since they’d first discovered the Castle.

Allura chose Pidge, which was another unexpected turn of events. The two of them barely even spoke as far as Keith could see…they were friends as much as any of them were but they weren’t especially close. Shiro was Allura’s closest friend in their group with her sometimes rocky interactions with Lance coming next.

Lance…Keith fully expected him to choose any of the other three. Hunk, his best friend. Pidge, one of the two members of his loyal crew of three. Allura, who he claimed more than once to have feelings for.

“I voted for Keith. He’s our leader plus he’s half-Galra, so I think he’s, like, the future.”

Those were not words Keith had been ready to hear. They caught him so much by surprise that for a second he forgot their situation.

“Are you serious?” He blurted out.

“Well, yeah,” Lance looked a bit embarrassed at having to, for once, give his actual opinion instead of their usual back and forth bickering. “Don’t get me wrong, you still have a lot to learn, but you’ve been a good leader. You’re not just a Paladin, you’re a Blade of Marmora, you were out there really trying to change the universe while we were still just doing publicity appearances and putting on shows. If any of us has a shot at really bringing peace to the universe, I think it’s going to be the one who’s made up of the best parts of both sides.”

“That’s so touching,” Bob said dryly, his chin resting on one hand as he absently tapped his cue cards against an armrest. “Very sincere.”

Keith didn’t have an answer. He dropped his eyes down to the top of his podium as Bob came floating over to him.

“Keith,” Bob said slowly, now tapping the cue cards loudly. “Keith, Keith, Keith. Let’s talk about your answer.”

He snapped his fingers, and everything went eerily still. When Keith looked around he found everything frozen…Pidge mid-blink, Allura in the middle of taking a breath, Lance with his eyes turned up, the hand that had been scratching the back of his head unmoving, Hunk in the middle of flicking something off his podium. That creepy audience track quieted as well, leaving him feeling almost like he was in an empty room.

Bob lifted one of his cue cards, reading off of it.

“I volunteer to stay, let everyone else go,” he said, reinforcing Keith’s belief that this was some kind of astral plane creation. There was just no way this guy could see into his head so easily otherwise. “I wonder if you know exactly what it is you’re offering with that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Keith said coldly. “There are uncountable lives in the universe at risk and you’re threatening one of the only groups of people who can do anything about it. If you absolutely won’t let us all go then fine, I’ll stay. But you need to set them free.”

“Forever is a very long time,” Bob mused. “People go extinct. Stars die. Universes collapse. But forever just keeps going on. In just the tiniest fraction of forever, all four of your friends will reach the end of their lifespans. Do you really think it’s wise to volunteer yourself to be in my service until long after you can’t even remember their names anymore?”

“Stars will die and universes will collapse whether I do or don’t,” Keith answered sharply. “What does it matter to you? If they’re so insignificant to you in the long run, let them go! You want something to keep and entertain yourself with? Fine, I’m here.”

“Oh, you’re feisty,” Bob chuckled in dark amusement, his chair slowly spinning in place. “Do I let them go and keep you, since you’re so kindly offering? Choices, choices.”

He let Keith stew for a moment, then slowly came to a stop.

“I think,” Bob decided, “you’re going to have to finish the game. Let’s go back to the original answer you started to write down first.”

“Wait,” Keith started. “Just let me—”

“Bad things happen if you don’t play by my rules,” Bob warned.

He gave a wave, and the others began to move. Keith looked over and found their motions slightly odd, taking a few seconds to realize that they were moving backward. They came to an abrupt halt and sound returned, and Keith found himself hit with extreme deja-vu as he watched the scene be repeated.

“Well Bob, I voted for Allura,” Hunk gave his earlier decision with the exact same words, tone, and motions. “I figured she’s the princess, and she’s such a natural leader, you know? The universe needs her more than it needs us, plain and simple.”

“Aw, thank you, Hunk.”

Keith looked down at the top of his podium, at the screen there. Neither his scribble nor his written statement was there anymore, now it simply said “Lance.” It wasn’t in his handwriting.

“I selected Pidge. She and her family have the best chance of rebuilding what my father started.”

They were still all being played with, and Keith felt a surge of anger. What was even the point of all this? If they could all be so easily silenced, why this farce of a gameshow in the first place?

“I voted for Keith. He’s our leader plus he’s half-Galra, so I think he’s, like, the future.”

Bob did not give Keith time to respond this time around. He turned to him immediately.

“Keith, the Leader, who do you think deserves to make it out of here, huh?”

Keith crossed his arms and glared at Bob for all he was worth. It was on the tip of his tongue to continue his argument, to quote exactly what he’d previously written and to fight for everyone’s release. But he was also aware that he had been warned. _Bad things happen when you don’t play by my rules._ As long as Keith didn’t know who those bad things would happen to, he couldn’t risk it.

He remained silent as a picture flashed up on his podium. The fake confusion on Bob’s face was sickening, and Keith was done being played with.

“Lance?” He prodded. “Why Lance?”

If he wanted some kind of heartfelt commentary that would play into this weird fantasy game show setting, he wasn’t going to get it. Keith narrowed is eyes and dug his nails into his own arms to keep himself in check.

“I just don’t want to be stuck here for eternity with Lance.”

“Aw, thanks man,” Lance replied. It took a second for that to sink in. “Wait, what?”

Regardless, Bob appeared to have gotten what he wanted. He looked almost smug as he turned to Pidge.

“We’re down to our very last vote. Pidge, you’re the Paladin that everyone says is the smartest, the most analytical, the most logical. Let’s see who you voted for.”

Keith barely paid attention as Pidge chose Hunk and Bob acted shocked. He already knew their “host” was aware of their answers before they said them, at this point he just wanted to force everyone to say it out loud to their friends’ faces.

“Nobody voted for themselves,” Bob announced, slowly drifting away. “Everyone wanted someone else to get to leave, and every single one of you got a vote.”

He was still facing the camera, but it was as if that was just a secondary prop as he addressed his five captives. Keith wasn’t sure why Bob seemed so satisfied with their replies, or why he hadn’t been allowed to at least voice his own.

“So, I guess we all get fed to the Snick or something now, right?” Lance asked darkly. His mood change was quick, hinting that he had been at least partially aware that they were being toyed with all along even if his own reaction had been to defensively play along.

“You all get…” Bob rounded on him, pinning him with a glare as he moved in close, eliciting a squeak from Lance. That seemed to amuse him and he pulled away, now turning to Keith.

The pause before his next words was very brief, barely a pause at all. But Bob definitely looked at him, and it was a stern kind of look that said their discussion was somehow part of this.

“…quaz-cenbullion credits!” Bob announced brightly, melting back into the cheerful gameshow host persona. “You win!”

There was an explosion of light and confetti, and Keith looked down as he felt the bindings on his legs release. As the others started cheering and celebrating he noted they were all free to move again.

He had always been more sensitive to things than he had ever been willing to tell anyone, a sensitivity he now knew was to the movement of quintessence, and he began to feel the hold that was over them beginning to lessen.

You win. They were being let go. Whatever Bob had wanted from them, somehow he had gotten it and Keith could feel that he was keeping his promise to let them go if they earned that ridiculously made-up number of points.

Everyone was going home. Nobody was being left behind.

He let out a soft sigh and crossed his arms, leaning against the podium with his hip. Bob went back to his stupid, unmanned camera to give a dramatic closing pitch, and Keith felt himself suddenly startle awake.

* * * * *

**_Current day_**:

Keith instinctively made a grab for Black’s controls, belatedly realizing that he was lying in his bed and hadn’t been sleeping in his ship’s cockpit. He dropped his arms back down with one covering his face, wincing against the thin sliver of light that had managed to work its way around the edge of the curtain in just the right spot to hit his eyes.

Today marked three days since Shiro had put everyone on mandatory R&R, and Keith had spent the lion’s share of his quiet moments in the empty apartment mulling over that day in space.

Like the others, he had mostly forgotten Bob and his antics once they had been presented with the far more important threat of Sendak. The memory had been allowed to fade, because why not? They’d all been released and left alone, and that mysterious entity had gone on his way.

Now Keith knew better. He let his arm fall away and lightly rubbed his forehead, where he knew an invisible symbol that he couldn’t see followed him wherever he went.

_It helps them track you down again in the future if they want to find you._

Onyx’s words had probably meant to be reassuring in some way, because to him this “god” was an important figure. But to Keith they were haunting, and a rude awakening.

He had offered to be kept if it meant everyone else walked free, and now he had found out that Bob had indeed taken him up on the offer. He was marked, tracked so he could be found when he could be of use. He, personally, had not been set free so much as tagged and temporarily released.

Bob had warned him that forever was a very long time, and Keith had brushed it off because his friends were more important. Now, with the context that Bob was a god who presided over entities who essentially served him forever, that warning had an entirely new meaning.

The question was how he was expected to live up to his part of the deal.

This was where everything became even more messy than it started. Keith thought he already had an idea of what Bob wanted, or at least of what he had wanted a few years ago. Back then, there had been no known bonded pairs running around. Keith was now sure that Bob’s “judgement” had been looking for people who would fill those shoes, who would be soldiers here in this reality to fight against Honerva. He had probably intended to request, at some point, that Keith be one of the people to take on that job.

And he had accepted, aware but not caring that he didn’t know all the rules of the contract. Like an idiot.

Keith kicked off his blankets and got up, carefully climbing over Kosmo to leave his bedroom and pad down to the bathroom. The mirror was positioned right in front of the door, and as he flipped on the light he could just barely make out the faint stripes running over his bare shoulders and chest. Like his face, the sharper coloring had receded to what was probably more natural for his age. Keith took that to mean they would eventually grow darker again as he got older.

He continued to mull his problem as he finished in the bathroom and headed to the kitchen, digging through the cabinet for the Pop Tarts. Bob apparently presided over the Sentinels, had he already had one in mind when he’d found Keith? Or had Keith been released until Bob found the right one? The Guardians had been judged at the same time and Black’s real nature had exposed him even back then, obviously he wasn’t the Quintessi the Mage wanted.

Keith needed to find Onyx. He had questions that he desperately needed answered, and Onyx was the only one who understood this particular god’s workings. Unfortunately, Keith had found himself shut out of the bonded situation, Shiro would only say that Onyx was fine and no longer at his place but wouldn’t give any further information.

He knew it was only because Shiro wanted them all to rest and not worry about a problem that the “higher powers” would take care of. But this was important.

Keith finally found his Pop Tarts, hidden behind several boxes of Lance’s recent purchases that had been shoved haphazardly into the cabinet. The other Paladin hadn’t been over since they’d all been sent home, but in the days leading up to their trip he had done enough shopping that an outside observer would think that he lived here. Keith didn’t really mind, but it was a pain to keep finding things like soup and peanut butter in the “foods that can be microwaved” cabinet.

Lance was going to stay over tomorrow night. They were going to have to have a serious discussion about kitchen organization.

He took his Pop Tarts in the living room and tried to watch TV, but his mind kept going back to the problem at hand. Should he tell anyone? Who? Did he really want to admit to the others that he’d made a deal for their safety? None of them would be happy to hear that he’d sacrificed himself in some way for them, and he doubted there was anything they could do to help. Mostly, they’d just worry.

After about half an hour, Keith gave up on the TV. He wasn’t used to having more than a day off at a time, even when it came to much-needed recovery. He needed something to do or he was going to go crazy, and he couldn’t involve Shiro or he’d get yelled at for not relaxing.

Keith pulled out his phone and went through the last few dialed numbers on there. He stopped at the third one, hitting the dial button and letting his head fall back against the sofa while he listened to the call go through.

“Good morning, Keith,” Curtis answered after the third ring, polite as ever. “No, he’s not awake yet.”

“How did you know that’s what I was calling about?” Keith asked.

“You’ve called me about him eleven times in three days. The odds were in my favor.”

Had it really been eleven times? Keith hadn’t been counting, but he supposed he might have called a lot. He couldn’t help it, he was worried.

“Listen, the moment Ryou is awake, I’ll ask him to call you,” Curtis promised. “If I could wake him up and have him talk to you right now, I swear I would. We’re not holding anything about his condition back from you, nothing’s changed yet.”

“Okay,” Keith said dully. “It’s just…everyone else is awake so I was starting to think something might be wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong, his situation is just a little bit different from everyone else’s. But that’s his own private business and not for me to discuss, I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it personally when he’s awake. It’s the kind of thing he should be able to share with his friends and family himself.”

That didn’t necessarily sound good, but it also didn’t sound bad. Curtis didn’t seem worried so Keith tried to tell himself to take his cue from him, under the circumstances he would be the first to be upset. But now that he had been assured that everything was still fine with Kuro, Keith switched over to his other topic of interest.

“Have you heard anything from Onyx recently?”

“Anything like what, and how recent is recently?” Curtis asked.

“Just, anything. I haven’t seen him since he passed out after we brought him out of the Black Lion, Shiro says he’s all right but I was wondering.”

“You’re worrying quite a bit about quite a few people,” Curtis observed. “I know it’s hard since you’re used to being looked to for some level of leadership, but in this case it’s not your responsibility to worry. You went through a lot last week and you should be resting, mentally and physically.”

“I know,” Keith groaned. “But it’s impossible to rest if I’m worrying!”

“Okay, hold on,” Curtis sighed, giving in. “Let me check.”

He went quiet for a minute, but Keith didn’t hear him put down the phone or go anywhere. He almost thought Curtis was just humoring him when he spoke again.

“He’s at Meadowbrook and Sycamore.”

Keith’s laptop was still plugged in and open on the coffee table. He stretched forward and tapped it awake, punching in that intersection.

“There’s nothing there but an adult store and a shooting range,” he noted.

“If it helps at all, he’s probably not at the adult store.”

“What would a Sentinel be doing at a shooting range?”

“I really don’t like to make baseless assumptions about people,” Curtis replied. “But in this case I think it’s a strong possibility that he’s probably shooting.”

Curtis’ brand of sarcasm could sometimes be so quiet and polite that Keith didn’t realize how badly he was hit until a few seconds afterward. He physically pulled the phone away from his ear to give it a dirty look, as if that might somehow put Curtis in his place.

“Thanks,” he said dryly. “You’re a national treasure.”

“Wear ear protection,” Curtis advised. “Safety first.”

Keith let Curtis get off the phone and closed up the laptop, going to get dressed. He tried to prod Kosmo awake but the wolf wasn’t having it, he was on vacation and even if Keith had issues with staying in Kosmo had no such problems.

It was just as well, he decided as he grabbed some clean close and headed for the shower. He didn’t really need any company for this particular errand anyway.

* * * * *

It was the mid-morning in the middle of the week, so the shooting range was predictably empty except for a few customers. Keith had his own gun with him, tucked safely in its case instead of its holster, so he wouldn’t look completely out of place. The place wasn’t big, but it still took him a couple minutes after he checked in to find the booth where the person he was looking for was settled.

Apparently, “about seven feet tall and wearing all black” wasn’t descriptive enough to ring any bells for anyone when asked. Either that, or the Sentinel had some kind of protective shielding going on that stopped him from being noticed too much.

He found Onyx in the last shooting lane in the indoor span of the range. He was lying on his stomach on the floor, squeezing off slow, steady shots with a sniper rifle at a target that was almost all the way down at the far end of the lane. He only missed firing a single shot, glancing back to see who was there when he sensed Keith approach, then went back to finishing off his rounds. It was another minute or so before he stopped even though Keith knew this particular gun only had ten bullets, in no hurry to stop what he was doing.

When he finished, he pushed himself up to his knees and started to reload the gun. He had on safety goggles, but the earmuffs were settled around his neck. Keith removed his own now that the firing had stopped.

“Those are supposed to go over your ears,” he advised.

“I know,” Onyx said lightly. “But I like hearing the bang.”

Keith didn’t push the issue. He didn’t know if the loud noise could actually hurt him, after all. Maybe it wouldn’t, he didn’t seem to have any problem hearing Keith speak.

“So…is this the kind of place you hang out in a lot?” Keith asked, looking around.

“Is that you’re way of asking me if I come here often?” Onyx quipped. “No, not shooting ranges specifically. But when there’s nothing happening, it never hurts to train. I’m generally more of a knife man, but it’s good to know how to use different things. Do you shoot?”

“I have a pistol,” Keith answered, holding up the case. He moved to the lane right next to Onyx’s, setting the case on the table there and taking his own gun out to load it. “I practice sometimes, but guns like this were designed on Earth. Too many different environments out there where gunpowder doesn’t react the way it’s expected to. I only carry it when I’m here, I’m kind of a knife man myself.”

He set the gun down and drew his mother’s blade, holding it up for inspection. Onyx looked up from loading his gun and whistled.

“Nice,” he complimented, reaching up to take it. “Can I?”

Keith handed it over. Onyx set the rifle down to spin the knife in his fingers, testing his weight. To Keith’s surprise, the blade glowed softly and extended, something only he and his mother had ever been able to get it to do.

“This…is luxite,” he said approvingly. “Good choice.”

“You know it?” Keith asked, watching with interest as the blade shifted shapes several times. It never actually took the same form it did for Keith, but it did react to Onyx. “They can’t make those blades anymore, the planet where they used to get it was destroyed.”

“Luxite is a druidic metal,” Onyx answered, letting the blade shrink back down into a knife. “There are planets out there with it, but it’s rare. It’s like…the druidic equivalent of what psyferite is for gifted Alteans. If you know what you’re looking for you can find it, but it’s not easy.”

“Psyferite is what those Komar mechs are made of,” Keith remembered. “And what was in the mine on Colony One.”

“Colony Two is also rich with it,” Onyx answered, handing the knife back. “Funny thing about that, though…if you find a planet that has psyferite on it, there’s usually one with luxite nearby. The ores are produced when a star system has a reaction that sends ripples through spacetime. The ripples bend the quintessence wavelengths that are hitting nearby planets…one effect is that it distorts time. The other is that some planets get hit with the alchemical end of the spectrum, and some get hit with the druidic end. Like when white light is split into colors.”

“There could be luxite on one of the planets in Colony Two’s system?” Keith asked his interest piqued.

The Blade of Marmora was starting to grow again. A new source of luxite would be invaluable.

“I’d go so far as to say there’s definitely luxite on one of the planets in Colony Two’s system,” Onyx answered, going back to reloading his rifle.

Keith let him go back to shooting. He busied himself with his own pistol, spending a little bit of time emptying a clip into a few different targets at different distances. He was all right, but Lance was the one with the shooting ability. Keith made sure he was a decent enough shot not to be useless with a gun, other than that he didn’t really try to perfect his skills.

Onyx reloaded his rifle two more times, but eventually finished. He hadn’t changed targets at all, and when he finally pulled his back there was barely anything left of the outline on the paper. He had to have emptied at least thirty rounds into it before Keith had even shown up. Keith pulled his current target back as well, less interested in his own performance. His distraction must have been evident.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess you didn’t come out here to practice shooting,” he mused, starting to prepare the rifle to be put away.

“Um, no,” Keith admitted. “I was looking for you. Curtis said you might be here.”

“Do you want something to drink?” Onyx asked, not even bothering with the question of why Keith was looking for him. “There’s a smoothie place down the block. It might look a little less weird if I don’t go in there alone again.”

“Um, sure?”

He didn’t really want to hang around the shooting range too much longer, this really wasn’t his thing. Keith went quicker trying to get his gun packed up completely as Onyx closed his case and took it back to the rental area. The other man was already waiting for him at the end of the shooting lanes by the time he locked up the case and jogged over to join him.

As they left the building, Keith was uncomfortably aware of just how much Onyx should have stood out. People should have been staring, maybe whispering, but in reality nobody seemed to even notice. Even the woman who almost bumped into him and who craned her neck up to look him right in the eye and apologize didn’t appear to notice anything out of the ordinary about him.

Outside was quiet, which was a nice change from the echoing gunfire. Keith had completely forgotten about the presence of the adult store until they had to walk by it and he accidentally glanced in the window, giving himself a very unnecessary lesson in just how many different shapes of novelty pasta existed in the world. Onyx didn’t notice, his focus was on enjoying the bit of warmth provided by the winter sunlight.

The smoothie place was only a short walk. Onyx let Keith go in first, and a teen girl behind the counter turned to greet the new arrival. Her expression sank when she looked past him and saw Onyx.

“Uh oh,” he heard her murmur to the others. “It’s the banana guy.”

Oh, this was going to be interesting.

“Good morning,” Onyx said politely as he went straight to the counter. The tired-looking girl went to the register.

“‘morning. What can I get you?”

Even as she asked, she was already punching things in. Clearly she had been through this before.

“Medium banana berry, extra banana,” Onyx requested.

“Extra banana,” the girl repeated.

“Like, extra,” he insisted. “I keep saying extra, but you don’t really ever do it.”

“Sir, if I put any more banana in your cup you’re going to need a fork,” she said defensively.

“Then I guess give me a fork,” Onyx said logically.

She was frustrated. Keith was intrigued. Onyx was seemingly completely unaware there was any kind of conflict going on here.

Keith and the other two workers watched the girl huff over to the cups and grab a medium one. Instead of going through the process of making a smoothie, she threw half a strawberry into the cup and then proceeded to fill the rest with chunks of banana. She put nothing else in it, sticking a fork in the top and then returning to slam the cup down on the counter.

Onyx looked at it. He picked it up, lifting it up so he could see the cup’s contents in its entirety.

“Was that so hard?” He asked.

“Please just pay and leave,” the girl whispered, defeated, turning to Keith to see how he intended to make her life hell today.

“I’ll just take a small green tea vanilla,” Keith said politely. “No banana.”

While she went to go get his smoothie, Onyx paid for his cup of banana. He did so by producing a five dollar bill literally out of thin air while the boy at the register wasn’t paying attention. Keith snatched it out of his hand before he could hand it over, looking at it critically. Onyx chuckled softly.

“It’s real, I promise.”

All the hallmarks of a real bill were indeed present, and Keith was forced to concede it was legal. He handed it back over so Onyx could pay, then swiped his card for his own drink. But he only let it slide until they were out of the building.

“Where did you get the money?” He asked as soon as they were out on the pavement. “How did you make it?”

“It’s called the Transmutation of Matter Principle,” Onyx answered around another mouthful of banana. “Matter can be shifted into different shapes, like with your friends’ mechs, or it can be dissolved in one location and reconstituted in another. I just took it from a safe deposit box in the bank two blocks over.”

“So you stole it,” Keith translated.

“I could have altered an old receipt into a temporary false bill,” Onyx answered. “But I don’t think that girl gets paid enough to get in trouble for taking fake money for a cup of fruit.”

He had a point. And nobody would really suffer from a mere five dollar bill disappearing from a safe deposit box. You weren’t supposed to put money in there anyway, since there was no way for the staff to verify what was in there or be liable.

“So what brings you to track me down on this lovely weekday morning?” Onyx asked. “The last I heard, you were all supposed to be resting.”

“I did rest, I’m rested,” Keith answered. “I wanted to know how you were doing, the last time I saw you it was when you passed out.”

“I’m okay,” Onyx replied, giving him a little smile. “Thank you for asking. There’s a bit of poison that’s in there still, it’s going to take some time to dislodge so I’ll be a little sick for a while. But I’m mostly well. What about you?”

“The same,” Keith admitted, absently kicking at the sidewalk as they went. “Shiro managed to get the worst of the pain to go away, but it still aches pretty regularly. He said it’s going to take some time to figure out how to get rid of it. I dunno, I guess I just thought that since Formless had been around so long, this kind of thing would already have a treatment.”

“This, unfortunately, isn’t normal,” Onyx answered, lightly rubbing his own side where one of his wounds had been. “Formless wounds can sometimes have a sort of venom that makes the pain worse, but it’s nothing like this. It doesn’t get into the system and just stay there, this isn’t something we’ve ever come across before. And your friend, Shiro, he would know. As a Guardian, he was also badly wounded by an ascending ally who failed and turned, but he claims nothing like this happened then.”

“I keep hearing that phrase, “this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before.” For creatures who have lived for like, trillions of years, there’s an awful lot here that none of you have seen.”

“You stumble across something new every day,” Onyx said lightly. He looked down at Keith and put the piece of banana on his way to his mouth back into the cup, becoming serious for a minute. “I’m very sorry about your friend. The Black Guardian, I mean. Maybe if the others had known what to look for, he might have been saved.”

“He made a choice,” Keith said unhappily, shrugging that off. “That’s what people do, right? They make choices. Bad ones, sometimes. Then they face the consequences.”

“You can say that, but I know that’s not the way you feel,” Onyx answered. “I can see it in how close all the others are with the other Guardians. There are special relationships there, I know you and Black were probably extremely close. Maybe not so much toward the end, but for a long time.”

“Yeah,” Keith murmured, falling quiet briefly to take a sip from his cup. “It just sucks. It’s like every time I think I can rely on somebody, the universe just turns around and pulls it out from under me. And I can get over that…people have their own paths they have to follow. But this is the third one that’s tried to literally kill me in the last year, it’s getting a little bit…depressing.”

First Shiro, or rather his clone. Then Lance after his memory loss. Then Black. It was starting to become dangerous to even casually let his guard down, he had lucked out and found he had more lives than a cat but those lives were pretty steadily ticking down.

“He didn’t mean it,” Onyx said softly.

Keith pulled his gaze away from his smoothie to look up at him, and Onyx brought them to a stop to sit on the low wall around the parking lot they were passing. Keith pulled himself up to sit beside him, watching the few cars that were out today go by.

“Maybe the Black Guardian made some bad decisions,” Onyx allowed. “But I don’t think this was the path he really chose to go down. This poison that we’re suffering from, it had to have been eating away at him for a very long time. I think at some point he came into contact with this, and as time went by he succumbed to it. Sure, his personality was a little bit harsh and maybe he needed a wake up call to realize he had himself up on a pedestal, but I think his initial drive toward Ascension had good intentions. If it didn’t, he would have abandoned the rest of you to single-mindedly follow his goal a long time ago.”

Keith hadn’t considered that possibility before. Green had been so shocked when Black had lost his mind, and Red, Yellow, and Blue had been so angry and upset upon their return…clearly he hadn’t always been that way. He had been good at some point, good enough that they had never believed he would go this far.

“Ten thousand years ago, I put him into contact with this thing that’s controlling Haggar,” Keith admitted, looking back down at his hands. “In a life before this. That Formless took her over early, and I don’t remember as much of it as I guess Lance remembers of his past, but I must have really loved her. I let her manipulate me, I kept the Black Lion on Daibazaal, close to its influence. Then I turned around and manipulated everyone else into going into the quintessence field at its request, which just made it stronger. Most of the beginning of our time in this war was just us going up against something that used to be me. Black saved me from it back then, he pulled my core loose from my body and sent me away to safety with the others. I wonder if that was when it happened. I wonder if he was poisoned while he fought that thing to try and save my soul.”

“It’s possible,” Onyx replied gently. “But that was also his choice to do, so don’t take my words as permission to feel guilty. Anything Zarkon did after your core was removed wasn’t you. It was a Formless controlling your dead body like a puppet and using your face. Whatever it did to the Black Guardian over the last ten thousand years, the responsibility for that lies squarely on Honerva. You picked a different path in this life, you’re fighting with everything you have to stop this thing. You’ve paid your debt for any part you had the last time around, it’s time to look forward now and let those old mistakes go.”

That was easier said than done. He supposed it said something about his character that he did feel responsible instead of shifting the blame, but that made it difficult to just shrug everything off and look to the future.

“The Mage, would he have known about this?” Keith asked. “Back when we ran into him, we didn’t know anything about our past lives or who we were. Would the Mage have known?”

“The Mage has been in this universe for quite some time. If I had to guess, I’d say they probably came over here about the same time the White Lion did, and to investigate the same thing. They would be aware of how your current threads connect to the past ones, yes.”

Suddenly, the reason for the caricatures of their opponents became clear. Why Bob had made them face off against Zarkon, Haggar, and Lotor instead of some other random faces. Because he knew Keith was linked to them, that he had a part in the creation of the Universe’s greatest enemy. In a way, Bob had been making them face off against Keith’s previous mistakes. It was getting annoying how much was only becoming clear in hindsight.

“I made a deal with him,” Keith admitted. “Them. The Mage. He…they had us caught in a pocket dimension and they were testing us, they made us each choose which out of the group we wanted to see set free while the rest stayed forever. I volunteered myself if they would let everyone else go.”

“Ah, so that’s how you got your mark,” Onyx supposed. “I was wondering.”

“Yeah. So does this mean that I’m like…bound into servitude to them forever or something?”

“The Mage of Chaos is called the Mage of Chaos because they can’t be predicted,” Onyx answered almost absently, looking up at the sky. “That’s not necessarily because they’re wild and have no reason, though. Their domain is the physical world, and the physical world is full of unpredictable mortals. The Mage has to change their course just to keep up with the changes mortals make to the universe. Chaos isn’t always a bad thing…chaos is change, growth, life. But it also means the Mage’s intentions now might be very different from what they were when you met them.”

Onyx pulled his eyes away from the sky to look back down at Keith.

“You’re thinking about your brother. Brothers, I should say, you’ve already come to think of the other one as yours too, haven’t you? About what they are, about whether you might end up the same and what that means for you.”

“I am,” Keith conceded. “Thinking about it for the last few days, it only makes sense. If Bob was here trying to figure out a way to stop Honerva and he needed people to fight for him, I can see how he might have been out stopping groups of warriors to see if any of them would be useful. I just…don’t know if I’m still expected to fulfill this contract now that Shiro already has. And Kuro, and Curtis and Lotor. There were none then, there are four of them now. Plus you, and now they know how to make contact with the other side and potentially find more.”

“Well, the only way you’re actually going to get an answer about the Mage’s intentions is if you ask them,” Onyx said reasonably. “Like I said, that mark is a two-way street. They can always find you, but it also lets you reach out to them. Just be prepared to wait a bit, they get busy.”

The thought of coming face to face with Bob again wasn’t an attractive one. Keith did not like him, period, and he got the feeling that trying to get answers out of the Mage would be like getting blood from a stone.

“How do I even go about that?” Keith asked. “I’m guessing it’s not as easy as just picking up the phone and making a call.”

“It’s about concentration, and it’s about intent,” Onyx answered. “The closest thing to familiar I can get you is prayer. Obviously you’re not asking some unknowable, faceless entity to grant wishes, but the theory is really the same. Relax, focus, and ask. The connection will do its part. Then you just wait.”

That didn’t sound too hard. Keith wasn’t a man who put much stock in prayer, but if that was how this worked then that was how this worked. Now that he knew, he could consider his options.

“So, the waiting part,” Keith said. “Right now, everything’s quiet. I think we’re going to stay Earth-bound until after this wedding, it’s supposed to be a really big diplomatic event for the Coalition. Now more than ever, because the Galra will be sending a delegation. This is too important to potential peace in the universe for us to go running off on missions and missing it. What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“I’ll be sticking around here,” Onyx answered. “I’ve never really just hung around and lived in a city before. I know that one Gold from back before he met Curtis, now that he’s got a house and all he offered to let me stay in a spare room if I wanted. So I think I’ll just check out the sites and relax until I’m needed to hop back and forth and play messenger.”

“That’s good, we could use all the help we can get,” Keith answered, dropping down from his seat on the wall. “I should probably get back before Shiro finds out I’m not “relaxing” enough. The others all transferred in over the years but I was born in this area, if you want I can play guide for you sometime. I mean, it’s the least I can do, you’re helping us out a lot.”

“I’d like that,” Onyx said pleasantly. “It would be nice to meet everybody properly without imminent death hanging over our heads.”

“Yeah,” Keith smiled a little, running a hand through his hair. “So I guess if you want to get in touch with me, just have Curtis call. Thanks for the advice.”

“Advice is part of the job description,” Onyx grinned. “Be careful on that motorcycle, there’s black ice on some of the arterial roads.”

Keith nodded and said his goodbyes, making his way back to his bike. He locked his gun safely away and checked his phone, noting that it was still before noon. Lance would be calling soon, to discuss what they wanted to do tomorrow night, he knew he should probably be home by then so he wasn’t asked where he was or what he was doing.

Keith tugged on his helmet and started up his bike, peeling out from the shooting range parking lot and heading back toward home. He still had a lot to think about, but at least now he knew where he should start.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you all know, I didn't ignore any of the replies regarding writers responding to comments. I'm glad I got such good feedback! But my job was closed for a month in the pandemic shut down, and since we opened and started shipping again it's been insanely busy. I just don't have the energy right now to gush over everyone the way I want to gush over you all, but hopefully things will even out soon!

Kuro awoke gradually from an undisturbed sleep, drifting slowly to consciousness in a room that was dark and cool. The faint hum of life support told him he was on a ship, which was difficult to wrap his head around in his sleep-muddled state. What made it even harder was that the world itself seemed so damn loud, like everything in it was giving off a pulse of its own that reverberated through his skull.

The blankets and pillows he was wrapped up in weren’t as soft as what he’d recently become accustomed to but they were comfortable enough for him to stay encased for just a few more minutes. Biology eventually forced him into full wakefulness and up out of bed in search of the bathroom.

He recognized the room as soon as he sat up. It was dark, but the thin line of light that came from just under the base of the bed lit the silhouettes of the room’s contents, and after fighting himself free from the blankets his brain picked out the familiar family photo on the wall and books lining the glass-sealed shelf.

His first concern was the bathroom. As he was washing his hands afterward he took stock of himself, trying to discern if he needed a shower. His last memory was the freefall after the explosion, almost breaking his hand as he kept slamming the release to try and uncouple the pilot capsule from the rest of the mech. His inertia dampeners had broken down about halfway through the fight, and he knew he’d been badly bruised and smeared with at least a little bit of blood.

It was too dark to see clearly in the mirror and he didn’t feel like turning on the light, but looking at his hands as he went back out into the room told him that he had been tended to while he slept. The armor he had been wearing was also gone, replaced by sweatpants and some kind of sports team t-shirt. He was on the Atlas right now, so it stood to reason the clothes were Takashi’s.

The Atlas thing was confusing in and of itself. By all available information, he shouldn’t have survived the fight. His Abyss vision had said as much, and he’d known as he was falling that his release wasn’t working and that the extra mech weight around his capsule was going to make for a far more lethal crash landing.

He needed to find somebody to talk to, and get filled in on what had happened.

He finally turned the light on so he could hunt for some kind of footwear, but his boots had also been taken away with the armor. The sneakers by the bed actually did belong to him, so he must have been asleep at least long enough for somebody to fetch them from the house and return. Kuro sat on the edge of the bed to pull them on, carefully testing his limbs and muscles as he moved.

He felt…good. Nothing was sore, nothing ached. And the improvement wasn’t only physical, the bone-deep weariness he had been carrying for months was gone, leaving him alert and almost energetic. Kuro couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this way, in fact it was likely that he never had.

A jacket of his was here, hanging by the door, along with a small blue stationery envelope that had his name printed, taped at eye level.

He knew the handwriting. What he didn’t know was how it had gotten there, because the person to whom it belonged to should have passed on by now.

Kuro pulled the little envelope down and took out the small, folded piece of paper. Same handwriting, smoother and stronger than he had seen it in recent weeks, without any signs of shaking hands or a feeble pen grip.

_Call me as soon as you wake up. Your phone is in your jacket pocket_.

Kuro felt like it was some kind of cruel prank, but he couldn’t think of anyone who had anything to gain by doing such a thing.

He pulled his jacket on and, sure enough, his phone was in the pocket. It was at about half charge, but had probably been full when it had been placed. He quickly calculated that he had been asleep for about a week, which was confirmed when he unlocked it to check the date.

Kuro opened the door and stepped out into the hall. He was startled by the presence of two soldiers who both snapped around to look at him.

Briefly, he mentally flashed back to the first time he had been stowed in a room on the Atlas. He hadn’t wanted to hurt anybody then, but the guards on duty hadn’t given him any real choice. He tightened his grip on his phone, prepared to force his way out of here again if necessary.

“Good afternoon, sir,” one of the soldiers unexpectedly greeted him, and both saluted as they ended their conversation and parted to get out of his way.

Sir. That was…suspicious.

“Good afternoon,” he returned the greeting, finding his voice gravelly and his mouth dry. “Is Captain Shirogane nearby?”

“No, sir,” the other soldier replied. “He’s in his office across the base today. He requested to be notified when you were awake and for you to be told to meet him in the first floor officer’s break room.”

“Do you need directions there, sir?” The other soldier asked.

“No…no, I don’t think so,” Kuro sputtered out, moving past them before they changed their minds. Being allowed to wander the base—or at least, not being stopped when he did so—had never translated to being allowed to freely wander the Atlas before.

Takashi being in his office meant that the Atlas was in her berth and not in space. That he would actually be on the ship wasn’t really surprising, in his vision this was the vessel he’d died on.

And maybe he really had died. Maybe he was dying now, lying on a gurney in the emergency room with his brain firing off its last few delusions in the form of walking through the Atlas.

The halls of the ship were empty as he walked down them, no signs of any of the other officers who slept on this floor. Kuro stole a peek back at the two soldiers to see if they were tailing him, but one was calling downstairs to announce his approach and the other one was rocking back and forth on his heels absently while he waited for his partner. Kuro pulled out his phone, quickly dialing the familiar number.

It only rang once before he got an answer.

“Ryou?” Curtis’ voice held concern, and in the background he could hear the receding noise of other people who he was quickly walking away from.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said needlessly. “I’m on the Atlas. There’s nobody else here.”

“I know, we left you where you were safe,” Curtis replied. A door closed, cutting off the last of the other voices. “Where are you now?”

“I just left your quarters,” Kuro answered, glancing back at the soldiers nervously one more time before he stepped into the elevator. “They said Takashi wanted me to go to the break room on the first floor.”

“Okay, I’m not far. I was just talking to Lotor and Allura, I’ll meet you there.”

“What’s going on?” Kuro asked as the lift dropped, the deck levels ticking down almost ominously above the door. Nothing made sense and it was putting him on edge, and waking up in a place that really wasn’t as familiar as some others didn’t help at all. “What happened after the attack?”

“Just keep going until you get to the break room,” Curtis said soothingly. “There’s nothing I can say over the phone that won’t just make things more uncomfortable, mon tigre. I’m just a few minutes away, I’ll be right there. All right?”

“Okay,” Kuro said miserably, sagging back against the lift door.

“Nothing bad happened. I promise. Well, nothing bad that didn’t end well.”

“Okay,” Kuro repeated.

“I’m going to hang up. I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”

“Okay.”

It wasn’t really okay, none of this was okay. But It wasn’t like any other answer would get him any other result…Curtis was several minutes away, one way or another, and Takashi was at least a ship hangar and three halls away. Neither of them was going to spontaneously appear here in the lift just because his nerves were on edge and he was confused.

The lower decks of the Atlas weren’t quite as eerily empty when he stepped out. Lower ranking soldiers were moving supplies and doing routine maintenance, and when he disembarked down the loading ramp there were more people bustling around.

He spotted Sam and Matt Holt running diagnostics on some of the consoles. Both of them stopped what they were doing to wave when they saw him, but he didn’t stop to talk. They were obviously busy, and he needed to meet Takashi.

“Excuse me, pardon me!”

People scurried out of the way as Romelle came through, carrying what looked like the updated armor for the Sincline pilots. She slowed down when she saw him, beaming on her way by.

“You’re awake!” She said happily. “Bandor was asking about you!”

She was obviously working as well, so instead of stopping completely and encouraging her to do the same he only slowed, returning the smile.

“I’m sure he’s got a lot to say about the trip to Colony Two. Is he on the cruiser?”

“Yes! I’ll let him know you’re up!”

She scurried off to finish whatever work she was doing and Kuro made it another ten yards or so. A short figure scuttled past him, then belatedly realized who he was and backtracked, blocking his way.

“You _are_ still here!” He sounded almost surprised. “Nobody has seen you, I thought you really did leave.”

“Hello, Slav,” Kuro gave him a tired little smile. “I’m sorry, I’ve been kind of…occupied for the last week. Did your Colony Two trip go well?”

“Oh, it went fantastic!” Slav declared. “Aside from the plague and the famine and the explosions and the druids and Honerva.”

Kuro quickly became alarmed by that. Slav wasn’t the kind of man who dealt in hyperbole or embellishment. He needed to be spoken to in literal words and he tended to speak the same way, if he said things like plague, famine, explosions, and Honerva, then he meant all of them.

“I have some very interesting environmental readings that strongly support my alternate realities work,” Slav went on as if he hadn’t just revealed the Colony Two trip had been full of death and hellfire. “There are some distinct anomalies that I’m still studying that occurred shortly after the fighting began—“

He stopped and waved away his own words. Most people thought his tendency to keep talking continuously about a single subject was because he was dense, but he wasn’t. Over his time on Earth, he had begun editing himself on things he didn’t think anyone else was interested in.

It was a direct result of some rather uncalled-for rudeness on Takashi’s part. Kuro had called him out on it and he’d stopped, but not before Slav’s feelings had already been hurt.

“It’s been a while since we had time to go have tea,” Kuro answered, crouching down so he didn’t have to shout over the people milling around. “I have a meeting right now, but I’ll talk to you later today. We can make some plans for the weekend, and you can tell me about these anomalies.”

It was honestly rather intriguing, listening to Slav go on about the relations of realities. On some things he was off by a long shot, but on others he was coming precariously close to being correct. It was always a delight when the denizens of a universe progressed to the point of really understanding the big picture.

Slave brightened a little, making a grab for one of the binders in his hands as it tried to slip free and fall to the floor.

“I’m definitely well overdue for some tea.”

A bark echoed out over the hangar, drawing their gazes a few yards away to see Kosmo bounding toward them. Kuro barely had time to stand up and brace himself before more than a hundred pounds of wolf slammed into him, excitedly licking his face. Kosmo was joined immediately after by Hoshi, and Kuro finally collapsed under the happy assault.

“Guys!” Keith’s long-suffering voice came from a short distance away, coupled with Lance’s laughter. “Guys, come on!”

A moment later Kuro was saved as the two Paladins fought to free him from beneath the two happy wolves. Kuro sat up, catching his breath, and happily hugged Hoshi tightly around the neck.

“Are you okay?” He cooed at her, sparing a hand to scratch Kosmo behind the ear as well. “Was my little princess worried? I’m sorry, I’ll never do that again.”

It was another minute or so before the wolves calmed down enough to let him up. Keith and Lance waited nearby, both dressed in casual clothes instead of uniforms or armor. But it was Keith’s face that drew Kuro’s attention.

“What the hell happened to you?” He blurted.

Lance burst out laughing again. Keith blushed a little bit and touched his face.

“Nothing!” He defended. “This is what I always looked like. Before I started playing with quintessence wrong, I mean. It just went back to normal after some exposure when we followed you into the rift.”

Plague. Famine. Explosions. Now the rift? What in the actual hell had gone on after he lost consciousness?

He must have looked shocked, because Keith backtracked as he and Lance helped Kuro to his feet.

“Come on, Shiro sent us ahead to meet you, we’ll go over everything when we’re out of here,” Keith said hastily. “How are you feeling? Are you okay?”

There was genuine concern in his voice, and Kuro felt a little bit bad. Keith had spent some time in the Abyss and was only in his twenties on that technicality, this kid was still a child and shouldn’t have been worrying about an adult.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Kuro replied, straightening his clothes as he recovered from his wolf attack. “I feel good, actually, really good.”

Kosmo and Hoshi backed off, the latter still dancing around them. Kuro draped his arms across Keith’s and Lance’s shoulders as they continued through to the hangar exit, and though Keith initially tensed out of habit he relaxed without throwing him off.

“How are you two?” Kuro asked. “How are the others? Is everyone all right? It’s been…a week, right? Slav didn’t exactly paint a pretty picture of the Colony Two mission.”

“Everyone’s okay,” Lance replied. “Apparently the mission went to hell just as badly as everything here did, and we’ve still got some people down. A couple pilot casualties from the striker fight, there’s gonna be a memorial next week, and a handful of others still in recovery. Oh, and we still have Alteans recovering from the measles outbreak, which I guess is technically our fault—“

“How did they get measles?” Kuro broke in, confused. “They were all vaccinated, and only a couple even had any direct contact with anyone outside of the cruiser.”

“They didn’t get it from the cruiser, they got it from us,” Keith answered as they reached the exit. He lifted a foot to kick the scan pad, which had been damaged during the attack and hadn’t yet been fixed. It beeped without scanning anything, and the doors opened. “One of us must have been carrying it back when we first got on the Blue Lion and left Earth. Allura got sick a little while after that, after she overextended herself healing a balmera. Shiro took samples but I guess she muted it so he didn’t recognize it right away, then the sample got stored and forgotten.”

“Lotor was hanging out on the Castle with us for a little while back when he was making the Sinclines,” Lance added. “He accidentally took the sample vial with some other things that got carted off to Colony Two. Nobody knew what it was and a couple months ago it got broken and colonists were exposed.”

Now that was a disaster on a major scale. Introducing an alien pathogen wasn’t always guaranteed to start an epidemic—most species were generally different enough to be immune to others’ germs—but humans, Alteans, and Galra were high-success crossbreeding populations. Measles could spread like wildfire in a human group, exposing a vulnerable colony with no experience in treating could decimate it.

“Yeah, it’s as bad as it sounds,” Keith read his expression. “At last count, Lotor said they lost about a quarter of the colony. It took them a couple days to track down the source and figure out what it was, but they lucked out that the Atlas was equipped to mass produce vaccines for exactly this reason.”

“There’s a field hospital set up in an abandoned sports arena a little north,” Lance said. “In the last three days or so, people have started being discharged. No more fatalities since they got here.”

“It’s just an example of how completely unprepared we are for something similar to happen to us,” Kuro frowned. “The Altean colonies are highly advanced, medically. With open communications and trade routes, they wouldn’t have needed help to contain it at all. Earth’s in a similar position right now, supply chains are still recovering and communications are only fully functioning in the largest towns and cities.”

“Shiro’s taking it as a warning,” Keith replied. “He already had the Atlas CMO draft a report to the CDC and send copies to the pandemic response teams for every country we have contact information for.”

The crowd had thinned immensely as they moved away from the work area. The break room they were headed for was only a few doors down, and as they got closer Takashi appeared around the corner down the hall. He broke into a smile when he saw them.

“Hey,” Kuro greeted, letting the boys go. “Sounds like you guys had a hard time on the colony.”

“Yeah, it was rough.”

That was all Takashi said before pulling him into an absolutely crushing bear hug. It lifted him a few inches up off his feet, and if he wasn’t a match for Takashi’s strength his rib cage might have been broken. It squeezed the air out of his lungs in an “oof,” but Kuro didn’t try to pull away.

It was…nice.

He had always thought that he would take a ship and go traveling through the universe, probably never returning to this corner of space again. That there would be no questions raised, there would be no opinions voiced. That he would be forgotten within a few days and probably never spoken of again.

But even in the aftermath of what appeared to be a disaster of epic proportions, people had noticed he was gone. People had asked about him. People had missed him. People had come running to meet him when they heard he was awake, eager to see that he was okay and ask how he was feeling.

That wasn’t anything he’d ever had before as a human, and it was something he hadn’t had as a Reaper in over ten thousand years.

“Hey, if we’re hugging anyway…” Lance said cheerfully, throwing his arms around both of them from the side. “I love a happy ending!”

Keith shoved his hands in his pockets, shaking his head slightly at the spectacle, absently shifting his weight from foot to foot while he waited for them to finish. Kuro snorted as Lance purposefully added his Altean strength to the mix, helping to keep him stuck with his feet up off the floor, and managed to fight an arm free.

“Come on, you may as well come be assaulted with me,” he invited.

Keith hesitated, as expected. He was a sweet kid underneath the many layers of trauma, Kuro often got the impression that he wanted to participate when people were being silly or physical but always held back because he felt like he wasn’t welcome. After a moment he gave in, letting himself be pulled over and squeezed along with everybody else although he tried to act like he was put upon.

Both Takashi and Lance chuckled at the way Keith was acting, but Kuro’s amusement faded as he noticed something. Keith and Lance had always had a glimmer about them from their gifts, but what he was feeling right now outshone them both. Kuro fought his hands up between himself and Takashi and shoved the other back, frowning as he got a good look at him.

Human eyes couldn’t see it but there were other senses that could, and what he sensed was a familiar light that absolutely should not have come from Takashi. This was a Guardian light, and not just any Guardian. This was a White.

“What did you do?” Kuro asked, his stomach sinking as he searched Takashi’s face for some telltale sign of change even though he knew there would be nothing external. Not if a few days had passed to let the changes in feature colors fade back to normal. “What the _hell_ did you do?”

“Uh oh,” Lance quickly let go and Keith followed suit, both of them stepping back. “Apparently what happened was that Shiro and the White Lion—”

“I already know what happened, Lance,” Kuro snarled as he shot him a look, then whipped back around to pin Takashi with his gaze again. “So they know? Did you run it past them first, or did you just dive in without a thought in your goddamn head?”

Takashi, for his part, only met his verbal assault with a tired smile.

“It will be okay.”

“It’s not as…are you _insane_?” Kuro demanded, feeling his voice start to creep up higher as he got upset. “Do you have any idea what kind of future you locked yourself into? Do you have any idea what you stand to lose?”

“Shhh,” Takashi said softly, reaching up to grip Kuro’s upper arms and stop the flailing he was beginning to engage in. “Calm down. People make their own decisions…that’s what free will is for, right? Being upset isn’t going to change it, or change the circumstances that led to it.”

“I know, but—”

“There is no “but.” This was a choice I made,” Takashi said firmly. “I weighed my options and this is the one I went with. I know you’ve spend a lot of time being afraid because you’ve been alone, but regardless of how you feel about your path in life you need to respect that I picked mine. If there are consequences down the line, I’ll deal with them. And I’d rather have you there being supportive than saying “I told you so.”

Kuro knew what Takashi was saying, and he knew that he was right, but he couldn’t just not be scared on his behalf. A huge part of why he’d chosen to wipe his own memory in the Abyss was that knowing how long and looming the future was without knowing what it actually held was terrifying, and he didn’t want Takashi to go through that.

Next to them, Lance and Keith turned to look down the hallway as the sounds of Allura’s and Lotor’s voices became audible. Takashi looked past Kuro, then looked back at him.

“Look, you’re not alone, okay? Neither am I. Neither is Lotor. The other side knows we’re here now, all of us, and with the rift gate and our overexposure immunity we could have the option of seeing them again. The worlds aren’t as separate as they’ve always been, the future’s not as empty as it’s always looked. So try to calm down and not freak out.”

“I’ll try,” Kuro said dully.

Takashi gave a soft snort and let him go. He spun him around to face down the hallway, toward the new arrivals as they finally reached them. Kuro stared at them all in silence, not even sure where to start.

Allura’s hair was…gone. All of it, she had a pixie cut that was a bit fluffy on top and almost completely shaven on the back and sides. She had saved some of it in the form of some small, collar bone-length braids at her temples, decorated with beads and ribbons and tucked behind her ears. Lotor’s was only slightly longer, it came down to about his chin and had a ridiculous amount of curl to the ends now that it wasn’t weighed down by length.

Both of them were secondary, because walking about a yard behind them was Curtis. That was where Kuro’s attention went immediately, and he instantly forgot anyone else was even in the hall.

Curtis didn’t look like he remembered, not from the last time he’d seen him and not even from when they’d first met. He looked more like the framed family photos throughout his house, fit and solid. While illness had robbed him of a lot of his good looks in the end he had been fairly aesthetically pleasing a few months prior, but now he his old photos didn’t even do him justice. He was a handsome man in health, stronger and steadier without constant exhaustion sapping his strength.

“How—”

As he moved directly under one of the ceiling lights there was a faint flash that answered the question before it was even spoken, a telltale glitter of gold that reflected from deep within the pupils of otherwise ice blue eyes. Kuro had started to take a few steps forward but now he stopped, looking back and forth between Takashi and Curtis.

Maybe other Quintessi, and even lower Reapers, couldn’t sense them out here in a reality without knowing exactly where to look, but a Gold could very quickly pick out one of his own.

He finally settled his stare on Lotor, who immediately raised both hands and took a step back behind Allura.

“No. Do not blame me for any of this, neither of them asked for my input on the matter.”

“I can’t believe this,” Kuro whispered, covering his face with both hands to give himself a minute. Maybe if he didn’t have to look at anybody his steadily rising distress even out. “I…can’t believe this.”

“Is this a bad time to tell him we have a Sentinel, too?” Keith asked quietly. Takashi elbowed him in the side. “Ow, guess so.”

The world was flipping upside down. Outside mortals were aware of bonded Quintessi. Others were locking themselves into eternity left and right. Apparently there was also a Sentinel hanging around now, because they sure needed a Trickster on top of everything else.

Kuro didn’t know how to process it. Any of it. Was he supposed to welcome this influx of people like him? Was he supposed to be horrified on behalf of the people who’d made this decision? Should he be angry? Sad? Elated?

He parted his fingers a little to look through them at Curtis and felt like he was all of the above, all at once. His initial unhappiness couldn’t be ignored, his own experiences so far weren’t exactly happy ones. But to see this man standing in front of him, not only alive but finally free from the pain he’d been in…

Curtis reached him, stopping in front of him and giving him a minute, deferential to his feelings as always. And why would that have changed? Kuro knew from experience that this didn’t change people, not dramatically anyway. The man in front of him was still Curtis Duchesne and always would be.

Except he was also someone else, and there were some traces of that there. The person standing here knew so much more about him than he had only a week ago, probably had memories of him from a life prior to this one. He didn’t just know what Kuro looked like wandering around the house in only boxers or going on rambling tangents after going a little too long without sleep.

Now he also knew what he looked like covered in mud and bruises and cursing from hours of training with war scythes, that he had been stupid enough to not be careful and had become a single parent young, that he’d been ditched by that partner, that he’d abandoned his kids to their grandparents when their world had gone to hell and everyone was needed on the front lines. He probably remembered the day the half-Iron had fallen down the stairs in front of almost everyone in the packs after giving a briefing on the situation in the moors. Probably remembered the time she’d knocked herself unconscious with a rock and sling after swearing she knew what she was doing. The day she’d been stung by a swordbug and had a swollen nose for a week.

All of this would be new to Curtis, there was no way he was seeing Kuro in the same light right now. On top of everything else going on, suddenly being so _known_ was a terrifying prospect in and of itself.

Finally, after giving him a few moments to get over the shock, Curtis reached up to adjust the jacket Kuro was wearing, zippering it up a little farther against the winter cool that still often permeated much of the base even with the heat on.

“How are you feeling?” He asked, lightly rubbing Kuro’s arms. “Better? Worse? Are you hungry?”

Kuro flashed back to Colony One, to the aftermath of the fighting. When Curtis had found him sitting alone, fatigued and heartbroken after his first real experience with losing patients. How he’d taken him up to the same room he’d just woken up in, gotten him cleaned up and changed and tried to get him something to eat before settling him in bed. Soothing, calm, ridiculously sweet and caring despite only knowing him for barely a day.

Yes, he’d turned out to have some personality flaws, but he’d also always been willing to listen and try to correct them. The caring and kindness had always remained.

Instead of answering, Kuro threw his arms around Curtis’ neck and hugged him tightly, burying his face against his neck. He was warm and solid and steady, he didn’t lose his balance or wince at being held too tightly. After a second or two to realize what was going on, Curtis wrapped his arms around him and Kuro felt him turn his head to kiss his temple.

“It’s a lot, huh?” He asked. “I know, we’ve had a week to process it and it’s still pretty weird. Are you ready to talk about it now, or do you want to get out of here and come back later?”

“No, it’s fine,” Kuro answered, still muffled against Curtis. It was going to have to be fine, wasn’t it? One battle didn’t mean the war was suddenly over, and every moment counted. “I need to know what happened.”

“Okay. Let’s grab you some coffee first,” Curtis advised. “It’s cold out today.”

“We’ll meet you out there,” Takashi told them. “After we talk, I have a meeting I want you two to be in on later.”

He gathered Keith and Lance and left down the hall, and Allura excused herself and Lotor to other business as Curtis guided Kuro into the breakroom. Hoshi followed along, but after sparing her another minute of ear scratches and pets she bounded off to follow Kosmo outside and left the two of them alone. Curtis started to make some coffee while Kuro absently picking up a framed photo that sat on a shelf full of little decorations.

The photo was old, faded from sitting under the fluorescent light so long, which made Kuro think that either not a lot of people used this break room or not enough of them actually ever looked at the shelves to care if the photos needed changing. It was of two young pilots, their insignias indicating they had probably only just been promoted to fly, smiling and cheerful in happier times.

Kuro put the photo of Takashi and Adam back in its place and leaned against the counter, watching the cup in the coffee machine slowly beginning to fill.

“How much do you remember?” Curtis asked, setting the cream and sugar within his reach. “Anything? Nothing?”

“Ugh,” Kuro scrunched up his nose, thinking back. He didn’t really want to remember it, but it wasn’t the kind of thing one could just forget. “I remember the coup. That idiot was taking over the building. I remember I was pissed, because if I’d been strong enough I could have stopped it right way, but instead we had to fight through the building. I remember the shields going down, I managed to get a little bit of a power boost when the shutdown reactions caused atmospheric sparks. Then those Formless came and you tried to get me to leave, but…”

He trailed off, remembering that day. Standing at one of the viewscreens, having plugged into the visuals using Takashi’s access, watching the three mechs toying with the Paladins.

“But?”

“But those Formless were circling,” Kuro finished. “Testing weaknesses, observing reactions. They were using pack tactics.”

Curtis glanced up from the cup he was removing, raising his eyebrows. His expression said he now understood what that meant, even though he wouldn’t have before.

“Pack tactics,” he repeated. “Formless aren’t intelligent enough to use pack tactics. They just follow a leader until they get bored, Honerva was probably puppeting them from a distance.”

“I thought so,” Kuro admitted. “Until I got out there.”

He accepted the cup, feeling the warmth spread through his fingers. He held it between his hands for a moment, enjoying the feeling.

“Back on Colony One, the druids that Allura, Lance and I were faced with spoke Altean. Which makes sense, because most of them were still using the last bit of processing power in the brains of the bodies they’d taken over. Eventually that would get eaten away and they’d just be voiceless and mindless.”

“Right,” Curtis agreed. “Their hosts think for them until they die.”

“Well the hosts of the three in those mechs were definitely already dead,” Kuro answered. “And the one in charge spoke the Language.”

The language didn’t actually have a name, that was why they just called it the Language. Nobody spoke it enough for it to need a name either, the only time anyone even bothered to study it was when they were considering Ascension. The oldest of the remaining texts were written in it, the original language of the three gods and the first generations of the three races.

Curtis let out a breath through his nose and leaned against the other side of the counter. It was definitely a Curtis stance, but it was also Gold reflected in the calm, thoughtful mannerisms.

“What it sounds like you’re describing is a Formless who didn’t just originate out in the edges of existence but was once an Ascended Quintessi.”

“Yeah,” Kuro agreed, looking down at his cup. “They’re mindless monsters on their own, I know. But it’s like being in a host, having access to a fully functioning brain, even temporarily, brings out parts of what they used to be. Does that sound crazy?”

“No, it sounds like a reasonable line of thought based on things you’ve seen yourself,” Curtis answered. “I’m sure you remember the warnings from when you started studying, you know what some of those things started out as and what you can be turned into. But if one of them actively spoke the Language to you instead of referencing its host’s language that kind of shines a whole new light on what we’re dealing with.”

“And it makes me wonder,” Kuro admitted, finally beginning to add some sugar and cream to his cooling cup. “If there’s something left in there…is it possible that there’s enough left to save?”

It was less a tenet of faith and more a known fact that the life cycle of mortal cores existed for development and growth. Everything had internal mechanisms for balance, and the sins of one lifetime were usually paid for in the next. Over many, many lifetimes, a core’s traits moved from chaotic and unpredictable to wisdom and temperance, like selective breeding in genetics.

But that was in the mortal world. In the quintessence field there was only one shot, if someone messed it up they were damned for eternity.

Or were they?

“Are you hungry?” Curtis repeated his question from earlier, changing the subject. Kuro doubted he would forget the conversation, but he was the kind of man who preferred to revisit things once he was in a position to do something about them. “It’s been a while since you ate.”

“A little,” Kuro admitted. “Also a little bit nauseous, I think I want to wait for food.”

Curtis nodded, preparing his own coffee.

“Do you remember you joined the fight?” He asked. “What happened when the Formless stopped playing with the Paladins and took Voltron down?”

“Yes,” Kuro recalled. “I got angry and acted in the spur of the moment.”

“Do you regret it?”

Kuro let go of the cup and looked at his hands. There was nothing different about them, nothing different in the way the world smelled or felt or sounded. It was loud now, so much louder than it had been before, but that was something that must happen when a person became attuned to a whole new element.

“No,” Kuro said after a moment. “I’m surprised. I didn’t think it would work, I only tried because I was desperate to help everyone.”

“We’re all surprised,” Curtis smiled when he said it, like the fact that someone who’d already bonded could Ascend wasn’t world-shattering information. Like they were simply discussing a problem with his car or job that they would just handle and move on. “But should we be? Do you remember when you said you felt like the weaker one part of you got the stronger another part underneath kept growing? You said you wanted to let yourself be angry, but you were afraid if you did that other part would come out and you weren’t sure what would happen. Maybe this wasn’t a spur of the moment occurrence, maybe it’s been building up for a while and during the fight you finally just let it out.”

Kuro did remember. He could remember very clearly sitting, curled up, in his little pocket of astral plane. hating the feeling that he had to swallow down his emotions and couldn’t just feel like he wanted to. And he remembered that same anger finally overwhelming him out in the desert, when he’d finally given in and reached for any power he could muster just to make those three druids suffer.

Curtis put the lid on his cup and came around the counter, kissing the top of Kuro’s head.

“Come on, we don’t need all of the answers right this second,” he said. “We’ll talk about it again later, let’s go catch up to the others.”

Kuro sighed and pushed away from the counter, grabbing his cup and following Curtis out of the break room. They went in the direction the others had gone, around the corner and out past a checkpoint to the lobby. At one point, two lower ranking soldiers who reached the same doors as them stepped aside, giving polite salutes. Not just to Curtis, but to _both_ of them.

“Oh no,” Kuro realized with a sinking feeling as they passed and crossed the lobby to leave the building. “Somebody gave me _responsibilities_ while I was asleep, didn’t they?”

“Oh, yeah,” Curtis glanced back at the two soldiers. He was used to being saluted and hadn’t noticed. “With the Altean cruisers landed and emptied, the civilians are being housed in the town near the stadium. Lotor’s officers are working out of the base here, they sent around a dossier with the names and ranks.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Curtis answered easily, holding open the door so Kuro could step out first. “Congratulations on your promotion, Chief Medical Officer Kurogane.”

“Noooo,” Kuro whined quietly, holding his warm cup tighter as they went out into the chilly afternoon. “Why not Acxa?”

“Because Acxa’s bridge crew. You’re the next person who’s had full access and study of the colonies’ full body of medical research,” Curtis replied. “Most of the medically trained Alteans were on Colony Two, and it suffered mass starvation and illness. They’ve only been here a week and recovery will take time, and Lotor knows he can trust you.”

They crossed the parking lot but didn’t leave the base property. Instead they walked toward the far field, where the Lorelia had once been settled. In its place there was a temporary hangar set up, and Kuro could see Takashi outside of it with Keith and Lance.

“And…I might have suggested it was a job you would be willing to do,” Curtis admitted.

“_Why?_” Kuro asked, making a face again. “Officers mean military, I’m anti-military. You know that.”

“I do,” Curtis conceded. “But I also know that when it comes down to it, you’ll stick your neck out for people even if I try to stop you. Which means as this war heats up, even though I know you don’t want to fight I also know you’re going to. I figured having a medical position directly under the Galra Emperor would put you in a position where you’ll be well-informed but won’t be expected to adhere to battle orders.”

Curtis put a hand on his shoulder to slow him down a little as they just about reached the others.

“You don’t have to take the position. Lotor knew there was a chance you’d shoot it down, but he wanted your name circulating just in case. Think about it.”

Kuro nodded, draining half of his cup instead of answering and nearly scalding his mouth. Pidge and Hunk had arrived just before they did, and now they were all ushered into the hastily-constructed hangar by a guard who verified their identities.

The hangar wasn’t much, literally just four walls built around its contents. That contents turned out to be two kneeling mechs surrounded by research and engineering staff. One white, one black, one merely being repaired and the other being reconstructed. There was a whole area filled with parts that had been collected from across the desert, being cleaned and repaired before engineers tried to put them back together.

“They’re calling them Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi,” Takashi said, looking up at the two winged mechs. “I think they got tired of me just calling them the black one and the white one. I don’t think I’m creative enough for them.”

“Are they insane?” Kuro wondered, sipping from his cup as he looked up at the two goliaths as well. “Earthlings really do love rebuilding things that can kill them, don’t they?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve been keeping an eye on Tsukuyomi,” Curtis promised.

“Keeping an eye on it for what?” Hunk asked nervously, looking up at the still, quiet machine.

“It’s an extension construct,” Kuro answered indifferently. “He’s animated by the part of me that’s not filling this body, but running on his own autonomous AI. But he still takes his cues from me…and I’ve been asleep for a week. I’m hungry. He’s hungry. Look at those scrapes on the ground by Amaterasu…whenever Takashi’s been under stress the last few days she’s gotten fidgety.”

“Uh,” was Pidge’s eloquent reply.

“Wait, he’s hungry?” Lance asked, trying to be subtle as he scooted back a little bit farther from Tsukuyomi. “What exactly does an…”extension construct” eat?”

“Whatever gets too close to its teeth,” Curtis said easily.

“But we stop that by like, giving Kuro a slice of pizza, right?” Keith asked. “The mech’s not hungry, it’s just reacting to Kuro being hungry. Is that how it works?”

“Yes,” Kuro gave a faint nod. “But also, I’m awake now. When I have conscious impulse control, so does he.”

There were some voices behind them, and then Adam was admitted to the hangar. Kuro stared at him, taken aback by the appearance of his face. No scars, no metallic reflections, he looked just like the photo in the Garrison break room again only with a few extra years on his face.

“He was in the rift too,” Keith said when he saw Kuro’s face.

“How long are we going to be here?” Adam asked, as blunt as ever as he stood back behind them a few yards with his arms crossed and refused to come any closer. “These things creep me out.”

“They’re just machines, Ōkako,” Takashi tried to sound soothing. This was undoubtedly an argument they’d had before.

“They have heartbeats,” Adam returned, unwilling to be consoled. “They’re metal demons and I refuse to budge on that because I’ve seen this anime and it didn’t end well.”

“They probably should’ve been burned,” Kuro agreed. “What happens if one of us dies?”

“Uh, it’s…you know,” Takashi squinted up at Amaterasu, running a hand through his hair and blatantly avoiding looking at anyone so he didn’t have to share the answer. Kuro looked over at Curtis.

“The mech will eventually run out of power animating it, but it will still function on its autonomous AI for at least a couple of hours until that happens. Only, without the benefit of its pilot’s impulse control,” Curtis answered obediently.

“It’s gonna flip out and rampage until it dies,” Kuro clarified. “The only saving grace is that if the pilot’s not in the picture Voltron can probably take them down with a little bit of effort.”

“Nope,” Adam said. “Machines with heartbeats do not end well.”

“Okay, but you’re all missing the point,” Takashi said, trying to steer them away from the macabre possibilities. “These are probably what Honerva is trying to create. Only probably bigger. Much, much bigger.”

Kuro looked up at the two mechs, feeling a chill run down his spine at the mere thought of something like this being in Honerva’s control. Takashi walked forward, lightly knocking against Amaterasu’s leg before leaning against it.

“Machines don’t have to be made from psyferite to be functional,” he said. “Altean technology was advanced enough ten thousand years ago to make the Lions, and even if they’re a bit clumsy without a Guardian inside they’re still just as functional with a trained pilot in the cockpit. Machines don’t have to absorb quintessence from things to work, either.”

“But every wave of Komar mechs we’ve come across has been made of psyferite,” Hunk followed Takashi’s reasoning. “And they’ve been slightly upgraded each time.”

“She doesn’t need mechs,” Takashi warned. “She’s got our DNA, we know she’s out there working on creating more permanent bodies for her druids right now. She’s going to ditch the Alteans, and her army isn’t going to need machines. So why does she keep sending more and more advanced Komar mechs at us?”

“Because she’s testing prototypes,” Curtis realized. “Honerva’s body can only allow so much of this thing to exist in a reality. Something bigger it can inhabit will let it ditch the mortal form it’s got when it’s done with the Alteans.”

“It’s building a body?” Kuro asked, looking up at Tsukuyomi with a sick feeling. “One made from psyferite, because psyferite channels quintessence and is more suited to the Transmutation of Matter Principle.”

“Yeah,” Takashi nodded, coming back to join them. “She’s upgrading features on smaller mechs and sending them out to test. Somewhere, she’s probably been working on something on a much more massive scale. Once she’s got the basic body and upgrades she wants, she can use a quintessence source to run through the psyferite shell and create her own extension construct.”

“Well she’s not going to be able to use the rift gate as her quintessence source,” Lance pointed out. “Lotor had the Imperial army secure that whole quadrant for the Empire and they’re guarding the hell out of that weird wormhole she has set up, there’s no way for her to get near it without half the universe knowing in advance.”

“She’s not interested in the rift gate, she’s going to use the kids.”

Kuro swiveled around to look at Adam, who was still standing back several yards. Everyone else did the same, and Adam looked grim.

“We always wondered why she’d take the gifted kids to Oriande,” Adam pointed out. “She’s only ever needed a handful to incubate new Formless in, and even then the hosts didn’t absolutely need to be gifted. She was planning on creating clones to make physical druids, so she didn’t need gifted kids for that, either. And on top of that, why take them to Oriande? Where the supply of psyferite ran low? It would have been smarter to move her operations to Colony One.”

“She can process quintessence from the white hole through those kids,” Takashi picked up where Adam was leading, looking horrified. “Their cores will purify it and maybe even amplify its power. Then her parasite can drain them dry to customize its new skin and be done with them.”

“We have to get there,” Pidge said, alarmed. “And sooner than later, we can’t afford another two-month wait. What if it’s already too late?”

“We can’t just go running out there right now,” Keith argued. “Oriande’s defenses will only let certain people through, and none of the gifted colonists are anywhere near recovered enough to potentially go to war.”

“Keith’s right,” Takashi frowned. “Not about the defenses…we can get past those. But building an army that can take on Honerva is going to take at least a few weeks, otherwise we’re just walking into a death trap.”

“We’re already working on it,” Curtis said softly, lightly touching Pidge’s shoulder. “The Coalition only has so much firepower at its disposal, and it’s still made up of a bunch of planets that are recovering from being occupied. But a delegation from the Galra Empire has been invited to the wedding on Arus, if a peace pact can be officially signed there we’ll have enough combined forces to hold our own at Oriande.”

“Honerva had her last Komari test a week ago, and they failed with flying colors,” Kuro mused. “She’ll want a mech that can wipe the floor with anything that comes up against it, not one that has trouble taking down a human planet even when it has backup. I think what we need to worry about now is more test mechs being sent out. When they stop coming is when we have to be afraid.”

“That means we need to get Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi repaired and operational fast,” Takashi frowned. “All the Komar mechs seem to share an information system to send back results of the battle tests, Honerva will already know they exist. Hopefully it will be enough to stop her from sending anything else to Earth.”

“She’ll also be aware that Kuro isn’t hiding what he is anymore,” Curtis pointed out. “Which means she’s going to know that Lotor will be taught about his heritage, and that the Galra Empire is going to be turned against her soon. She’s still got a lot of work to do, but her timeline might get condensed. The fact that she’ll have transmitted records of Shiro creating Amaterasu in the first place will clue her in that more Quintessi are now coming into this universe.”

“The question is whether that will make her more careful, or more dangerous,” Adam murmured. “Either way, the fight of all our lifetimes is coming up fast.”

“Take that as a warning,” Takashi suggested. “The wedding is almost here, this is going to end up being one of the most important diplomatic events in the last ten thousand years. Everyone is still suspended from duty until January 3rd, at which point I think the Atlas should launch and start prepping our forces to gather. Rest. Relax. This could be your last vacation for a long time.”

“This could be our last vacation ever,” Hunk whispered.

“Thanks for saying the quiet part out loud, buddy,” Lance praised, patting him on the back.

“Go ahead home,” Takashi advised. “I’m going to dismiss Allura, Romelle and Veronica too, we’re going to need all mech and Lion pilots fully rested. New year, new war. I’ll get in touch with everybody with a schedule for some meetings, but besides that you’re off duty. Curtis, I need to see you for a meeting regarding a member of the Atlas crew. Ryou too, if you’re up for it.”

“Do you want to head home, or stay?” Curtis asked, turning to Kuro now.

It was an innocent question, but it suddenly hit Kuro like a punch in the stomach. Home was…a different concept now than it had been a week ago. He had referred to it as home in passing, but the reality was that it had always just been Curtis’ house. And it was still Curtis’ house, the difference was that Curtis was going to be living there for a very, very long time.

He was going to be living in general for a very, very long time. Kuro needed time to think about that, and to think about what that meant for the two of them.

“Kuro?” Keith thankfully broke in, standing a few yards away with his hands nervously in his pockets as the others filed out of the hangar. “Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. Can I talk to you for just a minute?”

“Sure,” Kuro acquiesced, relieved to escape the loaded question he’d been asked for at least a few minutes. He followed Keith back outside into the crisp afternoon, moving away from the hangar doors as the other Paladins headed across the field toward the parking lot.

“What’s wrong?” He asked once they were alone, concerned. “Are you feeling all right? Overexposure?”

“No, I’m fine,” Keith assured him, glancing back to make sure they were alone. “You just looked a little trapped back there. When Curtis asked about home.”

“Did I?” Kuro asked, dismayed. He wondered if Curtis had noticed.

“Yeah. But I get it. It’s probably kind of weird to realize you’re suddenly living with someone you’ve only been seeing a couple months.”

“I don’t like it when kids are that observant,” Kuro sighed, crumbling his now-empty cup and lid in his hands. “Can you try to do that less?”

“I’m not all that observant, actually,” Keith answered, starting to look embarrassed. “Don’t be mad, but…Shiro and I have been talking about it all week.”

Talking about it. Now there was a statement that struck fear into the heart.

“Talking about what, exactly?” Kuro asked, trying not to sound suspicious.

“It’s not bad. Shiro’s just a little bit concerned, and I…well, it’s just…” he started to flush pink, grasping for words, looking at everything within his field of vision except Kuro’s face. “I mean…you’re kind of like, our other brother, and it’s our job to be worried about your boyfriends.”

Kuro stared at him. Keith looked ridiculously embarrassed to have said those words, and obviously hadn’t meant to phrase it quite like that. He started to get frustrated, slapping himself in the face.

“No, it’s like…you share Shiro’s DNA, so you’re like a brother to him. And if you’re a brother to him then you’re a brother to me. And we just kind of feel like you’re the long lost one who came stumbling into this hot mess of a planet and we don’t want you to get screwed over or something.”

He was having such a hard time getting across what he was feeling, which wasn’t surprising given that it was Keith. Sharing wasn’t really his specialty, just the fact that he was willing to do it was proof that he probably cared as much as he said he did if not more. Kuro managed a little smile.

“That’s sweet,” he assured the younger man. “And I appreciate it. But I don’t think Curtis is planning on screwing me over somehow.”

“I know, that’s not really what I meant,” Keith said dully, letting out a breath. “It’s more like…first I lived with my dad, then I lived in a group home, then I spent a bunch of time at the Garrison. And it’s always different, when the place you’re staying in belongs to somebody else. It’s not yours, there’s always this nagging little feeling in the back of your head that you’re taking up somebody else’s space and don’t have your own. And the others, they’re all talking about renting a place once Pidge is old enough, which really isn’t that far away, and while I think it’s great to have Lance over all the time and spend most of my time with him, I don’t know. Living under the same roof so soon…”

Keith really was more observant than he gave himself credit for. He put into words pretty thoroughly—though not very elegantly—exactly why Kuro had felt so attacked by Curtis’ innocent question.

“Anyway, Shiro and I were talking this week, and we thought that if you wanted, there’s an empty room in my apartment,” Keith mumbled, now looking down at the ground. “Shiro’s living with Adam now, and maybe I’ll be ready to move when Pidge hits eighteen, but for now I just kind of like my own space and we thought you might too. I’m pretty easy to live with, at least I think so. I don’t really care when you come or go, and pretty much my only demands are that you don’t rearrange the kitchen cabinets and you stick to the bathroom schedule in the mornings. And it doesn’t like, bother me if you have Curtis over, if it doesn’t bother you that Lance is there all the time.”

Keith’s reasoning was sound enough, though there was also something he didn’t say that Kuro suspected to be true. Keith could probably afford the apartment on his own, and even if he couldn’t, Takashi would be perfectly happy to keep paying his half of the rent since Adam took care of all their bills.

Keith probably didn’t want to be alone. Even with Lance over regularly, there were still several nights a week spent in an otherwise empty apartment with only Kosmo for company.

Kuro could relate.

And it did sound nice, having his own space. A place he could say was his, where he paid his bills and stood on his own two feet for a while. He had never really had that, from the lab to the facility to the Lorelia to Curtis’ place, Kuro had never really had a place that was his own and not extended to him by someone else.

Keith was shifting from foot to foot, nervously waiting for an answer. He had not been prepared for this conversation, they had probably planned for Takashi to be the one to discuss it with him. Kuro smiled again, this one a little more genuine.

“I think that actually sounds kind of nice,” he admitted. “If you’re willing to give up having that spare room, and you don’t mind Hoshi being there, I think I’ll take you up on your offer.”

“I don’t mind,” Keith said quickly. “She’s kind of been going back and forth between me and Curtis all week anyway. Though, I have to warn you…you’re going to have to buy a dresser. She and Kosmo have taken over the walk-in closet in that bedroom, you’re a little short on storage.”

“Sometimes sacrifices have to be made,” Kuro supposed. “Are you okay with me coming there tonight, or do you want a few days?”

“No, it’s fine. I’m heading home now so I’ll be there when you’re done here. I’ll have the extra keys for you then, we can go over the rental agreement tonight so you know what to expect.”

“I’ll probably end up getting something to eat with Curtis, we have a lot to talk about,” Kuro answered as Keith backed away. “I’ll call you when I know where and bring you something.”

Keith nodded and ran off to catch up with the others, leaving Kuro to watch him go. He had never had a family before Takashi had forced his way in without taking no for an answer, and especially not a little brother. It was…nice, to know people who he was really beginning to care about felt that way.

He turned to rejoin the others and found Curtis there, leaning against the wall of the hangar with his arms crossed.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he apologized. “I was just going to let you know we were heading to Takashi’s office.”

That was one of those unfortunate personality traits that Curtis was still working on, that whole poking around for information even when not necessary. But honestly, Kuro couldn’t bring himself to be mad about it right now. It just took the responsibility off of him to explain the change in plans.

“Are you mad?” Kuro asked, wandering back over to join him. Curtis raised his eyebrows, letting his arms drop away.

“Of course I’m not mad. There are people who care about you, out here looking out for you. How could I be mad about that?”

“What about me not coming home with you?”

“I’m not mad about that either,” Curtis answered, offering his arm. Kuro took it, and they started across the field toward the double doors they’d initially come out of. “One of the things most humans do as a rite of passage as they grow up is to live on their own. Maybe that’s in a college dorm, maybe it’s with a roommate, maybe it’s with a spouse. But paying their own bills, making their own rules, that’s a pretty big part of life. And you’re on Earth now, not alone on an empty facility…there will be things you’re going to want to go out and do without having to run them by me first so I know where you are. I’m not mad that you might finally want a chance to do what a lot of other humans on Earth get to do.”

They got nearer to the doors, where other people were coming and going, and Curtis slowed down a little so they wouldn’t be overheard.

“Do you still want to date me?” He asked, looking down at him. “Actual, start-from-the-beginning dating instead of that whole pretending to be married just to see what it would be like thing we just finished?”

Kuro ducked his head, unable to hold back the smile he was trying to fight down.

“You mean now that you’ve seen me at my worst, you want a shot at seeing me at my best?” He asked.

“I want a chance to make you fall in love with me,” Curtis answered, chuckling. He let go of Kuro to open the door as they reached it, and they moved from the cold air into the much warmer lobby. “I know you’re not there yet, I know it’s a big thing. But now there’s plenty of time, and I’d like to see if you could eventually get there.”

For such a complicated conversation, it was almost ridiculously easy and painless. Kuro didn’t feel any pressure, no fear of Curtis being upset if he spoke honestly. And that in and of itself told him a lot of what he needed to know about the situation.

“I think I could get there,” Kuro answered after a moment. “If you’re willing to make it a casual road trip instead of a direct flight.”

“Road trips are always more fun,” Curtis smiled. “They let you make all the interesting stops along the way. How about today we just go get your things from my place, then pick up some food for you and Keith and I’ll drop you off to get settled? Then, if you’re willing, we can go out to dinner tomorrow.”

“I think that’s a really good idea,” Kuro answered, feeling his face get warm and wanting to kick himself. This man had seen him naked, there was no reason he should feel giddy about an offer to go out to dinner.

But he did, because this was different. Both of them were different now, even if it was only a little bit, and that made all of this new.

* * * * * * * * * *

Shiro rewound the security footage to the point he wanted to show, glancing up from his desk and Ryou and Curtis finally arrived. Something must have occurred on their way to the office, because Ryou was practically glowing and Curtis had a pleasant little smile pretty much stuck on his face. They were holding hands, and Shiro almost asked if there had been a wedding proposal or something because the two of them looked like teenage crushes who had just picked each other in a round of spin-the-bottle.

He didn’t ask though, because it was none of his business. Ryou would spill it eventually, and even if he didn’t, Curtis was physically incapable of keeping gossip from Adam.

“Okay, you’re both here, good,” Shiro breathed, checking his watch. “Here, sit down, it’s almost time.”

“Are you going to tell us what it’s time for at some point?” Curtis asked, dropping into one of the chairs at the side of the room. “You haven’t really given much detail.”

“I don’t want to give you any detail yet,” Shiro admitted. “I need to get your absolute first impressions with nothing coloring your judgement.”

He needed an honest, immediate opinion, and he didn’t want to give either of them a reason to know what they were looking for. So when there was a knock at the office door, Shiro turned his chair to face his brother and Curtis and watched their faces for their reactions.

“Come in.”

The door opened and Nikolaev stepped inside, surprisingly resilient for a man who had practically been on death’s door a week ago.

“Good afternoon, Sir,” he still didn’t sound so great, but he was up and moving and had been discharged from the med bay earlier that morning. “They said you wanted to see—”

He stopped. Shiro wasn’t looking at him, but he could practically hear the expression of horror in his face.

“Um, actually, I’m feeling pretty weak,” Nikolaev said quickly. “I think I should get back downstairs and see a nurse right away.”

It was too late. Curtis and Ryou had both whipped around to stare in the newcomer’s direction, and Ryou was already halfway out of his seat. Shiro couldn’t feel anything himself, and both of them had previously been in Nikolaev’s presence with no reaction, but that was before they both had the heightened senses of a Gold.

“Stop,” Shiro called as Nikolaev tried to make his escape, motioning for him to come into the room. “You’re already caught, there’s no point in running. Where are you even going to go?”

“Damn,” Nikolaev swore quietly and sighed, coming into the room and closing the door behind him. He shuffled over to the seat in front of Shiro’s desk like a cadet who’d been sentenced to detention, folding his hands in his lap and looking down at them.

“Speedy recovery for a man who was breathing through a tube last week,” Shiro commented.

“Yeah,” Nikolaev agreed glumly. “I still feel kind of like crap, but I’m not contagious anymore, so there’s that.”

Ryou was trying to whisper to Curtis but he was a bit confused and excited, so he just sounded like he was hissing and spitting like a damp cat. Curtis, for his part, was as calm as ever, lightly rubbing his arm and nodding in sympathy with his distress. Shiro took a folder out of his drawer and laid it neatly on the desk in front of Nikolaev.

“What do you think that is?” He asked.

“My file,” Niko answered obediently.

“What do you think it says?” Shiro pressed.

“I guess…a lot of stuff?” Nikolaev tried.

“This isn’t your Garrison file,” Shiro said, flipping it open and watching Nikolaev’s face. The younger man winced as if just the personnel photograph on the front page was painful. “This is your Institute file. A lot of those files were destroyed or lost in the invasion, but we’re in the process of helping to move a new Warchief into position. He was willing to return the favor by pulling the physical copies of files from THEMIS’ storage bunker in Alaska and sending me some scans. What do you think the scans say?”

“Uhhh,” Nikolaev looked upward, frowning as if he was trying to think. He pointedly didn’t look at either Curtis or Ryou.

“They say you’re dead,” Shiro said helpfully. “Or, rather, they say Sasha Nikolaev died in the first wave of the invasion. His body was recovered, identified by family, and buried during the first few months of the occupation. In fact, this file was part of the last batch transmission that was sent to be recorded in Alaska before all internal THEMIS communication was disrupted.”

“Well, sir, I’m sure I find that just as disconcerting as you do,” Nikolaev tried.

He was squirming, but Shiro wasn’t ready to let him go yet. Instead he turned to a tactic he had learned from Adam long ago, pinning Nikolaev with his gaze and pressing on in the “teacher” tone.

“Do you know why I requested this file?” Shiro asked.

“Oh, I’ve got a five-foot-ten, brunette idea,” Nikolaev said quietly. So he did know where this was going.

“That’s the first right answer you’ve given me,” Shiro praised. “That’s it exactly, I requested this file because one of my pilots, someone I know to be very level-headed and reasonable, requested an official evaluation because he’d had an extended, vivid hallucination and he wanted to ensure he was still fit for his job. Any idea what that hallucination might be?”

Nikolaev gave up completely, letting his head fall forward against the desk with a “thunk” in defeat.

“I’d like to know what the hallucination might be,” Ryou spoke up. “None of this is answering any of the questions I have.”

“James Griffin came to me on Tuesday requesting an evaluation,” Shiro told Ryou, ignoring the soft groan from Nikolaev. “Out on Colony Two, he’d left the group to go out and retrieve the Infinite Zero crystal, which we were using to power a small pocket of atmosphere. The Galra had arrived and he wanted to make sure it didn’t fall into their hands. It didn’t go well, and he almost died. Then, lo and behold, his hallucination started.

“He hallucinated that someone—” here, Shiro shot a look at Nikolaev, whose head was still down, “saved him by arriving just in time to fight off the two Galra who were about to kill him. This hallucination got him a helmet to replace his broken one, because he was suffocating mind you, then got him onto the striker belonging to that pair of Galra to try and get back to the Atlas. Then ended up on a Galra cruiser with him when the striker’s remote was activated and it was brought into dock.”

“Oh, is that all,” Curtis asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No!” Shiro said with extremely exaggerated shock. “There’s _more_.”

“God, just friggen kill me,” Nikolaev whispered into the desk.

“This hallucination helped him start a mutiny, helped him take over the control booth, and helped him get a bunch of our soldiers up to take over the cruiser,” Shiro continued. “Then that hallucination hung around for a bit before just weirdly disappearing. Nobody else ever saw this person, who Captain Griffin claims was none other than Mr. Nikolaev. The nurses in the medical bay even swear he was there the whole time, handcuffed to the bed. But do you want to hear something funny?”

Shiro pushed the playback button in his console.

“_I’m not alone_,” James’ voice said confidently.

“_They don’t even get paid in GAC!_ _The benefits on this ship are trash!_”

Both Curtis and Ryou looked over at Nikolaev as what was clearly his voice complaining in the background, followed by Allura.

_“What in the system is going on up there?”_

Shiro stopped the recording. There was very little chance of anyone mistaking that background voice for anyone other than Nikolaev.

“This was pulled from a transmission recording in Sincline,” Shiro said. “We back everything up on tape after each mission. In fact, that was what prompted me to pull this.”

Now he played the video he’d had waiting, turning his screen around. It was security footage from the Atlas, covering the officer’s medical bay. The video clearly showed Nikolaev sitting up and fiddling with the cuff on his wrist. He needed two hands and wasn’t able to get that one, so he turned to the one linked to the bed. After a moment he was free, and he looked around carefully around as if preparing to sneak out.

And then, suddenly, he was three feet away from where he’d been standing, shoving something into the disposal chute. He was shaky as he walked back to his bed, barely managing to sit down on edge and re-attach the cuff before he fell backward, unconscious. He was like that for about half a minute before a nurse came by to check on him and rushed in, checking his pulse and calling for other staff.

Shiro opened his lower desk drawer and pulled out a crumpled Galra uniform. He dropped it on the desk along with the helmet, both having been found down in the Atlas’ incinerator room.

“Should we check the helmet for hairs for a DNA sample?” Shiro asked.

“No,” Nikolaev murmured guiltily.

“Then you might want to explain, and fast,” Shiro advised. “Ryou doesn’t like being kept in the dark and I promise you, he does bite.”

Nikolaev’s eyes slid to the side, but he was still careful not to look either Curtis or Ryou in the eye.

“Okay, I was there,” he admitted. “Griffin was near me when he was telling Romelle he was going to get the crystal from the power station, I knew the Galra would target that and destroy it immediately. And I knew he wouldn’t have any backup, and that he’d have to come back on foot even if he did make it. Since nobody else could be spared, I took an Atlas rover out to get him and found him being attacked. Unfortunately, the rover got hammered by laserfire and we couldn’t use it to get back. So we tried to steal the striker.”

“And you got trapped inside, and you got taken up to the cruiser,” Shiro finished that part for him. “Where you helped him stage a mutiny with the crew and get our soldiers up there. Okay, so we know from there what happened on the cruiser. How did you get back to the Atlas?”

“I felt a wormhole open, a big one, and I knew things were probably going to get serious,” Nikolaev answered. “But I also knew Griffin had that crystal, and that it could superpower the cruiser, so I talked him into going to the engine room. While we were there, somebody stopped time on the whole planet. I felt it coming because I was already keeping tabs on the wormhole…whoever was doing it was struggling, so I was able to fight it off and keep it from affecting me. I wanted to see if maybe there was something I could do to help, so I grabbed a striker and left the ship to try and find the person who was doing it. But I was sick and it was getting worse, so I had to change course and return to the ship.

“Time started to move again by then, but I created a small pocket in the medical bay to pull it back farther so the staff would all think I was there the whole time.”

Nikolaev spoke like a kid who’d been caught with his hand in a candy jar and had completely given up on even trying to make an excuse. Shiro looked over at the others, finding Ryou staring at Nikolaev with a semi-confused expression on his face. Curtis looked like a therapist talking to a patient, one ankle crossed over his knee and one hand on his chin as he sat with a thoughtful frown on his face.

“How did you work the striker?” Shiro asked. “How did you get through the doors on the cruiser? Yes, James did mention that, and no, I won’t accept “trade secret” as an answer.”

“That’s a really long story,” Nikolaev answered.

“We’re all immortal these days,” Shiro said flatly. “We’ve got time.”

Nikolaev finally looked up at Kuro and Curtis, letting out a sigh.

“They already know by now, but…I’m a Bronze,” he admitted, turning back to Shiro. “I’ve been in the realities for a long time. It started a while back, there was a disturbance at the edges of some of the realities, so my sister and I went to investigate. We were ambushed by a bunch of Formless, really nasty ones, and we had to escape into a nearby universe. That was about…thirty billion years ago, give or take. We stayed together for most of it, but you know how it is if you die or a universe ends. You just get caught up in the tide and you’re reborn wherever you land. My sister and I were usually able to find each other eventually, but this time it took a while. She wasn’t in the last universe I was born into, but I didn’t have a way to just check another one so I’ve just been living a few dozen lives and waiting for that universe to end so I could try to track her to another one.”

“You’re not from this universe,” Curtis repeated. “You just happened into this one, and found this version of Sasha Nikolaev was already dead so you took his place.”

“Pretty much,” Nikolaev confirmed. “I was born on Earth in my universe, under the rule of the Altean Empire. People like me were hunted down and killed because their stupid implants always malfunctioned on us and we couldn’t be controlled.”

“People like you?” Shiro asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Half-Galra,” Nikolaev clarified. “The Altean queen Allura destroyed Daibazaal ten thousand years ago after a disagreement with our Altean empress, Honerva. Queen Allura didn’t like having another Altean alchemist around who was stronger than her, but Daibazaal refused to surrender Honerva to be executed. So Allura invaded, took the royal family prisoner, and made Honerva watch Emperor Zarkon and their son Lotor be publicly executed. Then she locked her in a containment pod…it’s kind of a sick story. She’s still there now, alive but in cryo. Sort of a warning to anyone else who might go against the Empire.

“So the remaining Galra are kind of pissed. There aren’t many of us, just enough to form a rebellion called the Guns of Gamara. I was part of a half-Human regiment under Sven Holgersson and Akira Kogane, since human genes trump Galra ones our job was to infiltrate as full humans and get intel. One of the messages we picked up said that the Empire was researching a lost Tel-Galax shuttle that had been dispatched to find a trans-reality comet back in King Alfor’s time, before Allura started colonizing. They theorized that if it hadn’t been pulled into a system by a star’s gravity, it might still be floating in space. They wanted the comet so they could start spreading the Empire to other dimensions.”

“Wait, you were investigating the Tel-Galax?” Curtis asked, surprised. “The ship where Lotor got the comet he used to create Sincline?”

“Well, I didn’t know that at the time,” Nikolaev answered. “I mean, I knew that if the Guns of Gamara could keep the comet away from the Alteans we could keep other realities safe, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about skimming some of the ore. Activating even a small piece could punch holes between universes, it would make my search for my sister easier.”

“The Paladins were on that ship,” Shiro frowned. “They saw this Sven person you’re talking to, and another version of Slav. But not you.”

“No, they wouldn’t have,” Nikolaev replied. “Akira was back on the pod playing getaway driver, he’s the Guns’ best pilot after Sven. My job was to lay charges on the ship’s outer hull, it was too big for us to haul but if we could break the containment chamber holding the comet free we could haul that. While I was out there I couldn’t resist…I knew I could survive the rift because of what I was, so did a full walk to the other end of the ship. There was a really old Altean ship there and I panicked because I thought we were under attack.”

“You saw the Castle of Lions,” Shiro surmised. “That wasn’t an enemy ship.”

“Any ship belonging to Allura or her people was an enemy ship to me,” Nikolaev returned. “Have you had a chance to die by torture yet? It hurts. I wasn’t interested in risking that.”

“So how did you even get to Earth?” Ryou asked. “God, that comet was found halfway across the universe, wasn’t it?”

“Somebody activated the Tel-Galax,” Nikolaev answered. “I wasn’t expecting it, I was thrown off and my boosters couldn’t move me fast enough to catch back up with it. The rift closed and I was just there, being very quiet so the ship didn’t spot me. Eventually Voltron came through with the comet, and it was attacked by a Galra ship.”

“Lotor,” Shiro stated. Nikolaev shrugged.

“I don’t know, I have no idea what exactly happened out there. All I know is that I stayed very quiet until everyone was gone. But I couldn’t just float in space forever, so eventually I gave my SOS a try. It broadcasted on Galra signals, and I was picked up by a civilian ship. Once I proved I was half-Galra, I was…not necessarily _welcome_, they don’t seem to like mixed races too much here, but I was tolerated. It was a long-haul freighter so I just went to work to earn my stay. By the time we pulled into a trading outpost, Sendak was recruiting for the Fire of Purification, with the promise of staking out new territory just for his faction.”

“On Earth,” Curtis finished for him. “He was recruiting to invade here but didn’t want to say it.”

“Yes. I recognized the coordinates as soon as I saw them,” Nikolaev answered. “So I signed up and made the trip. Turns out, on a faction ship you don’t ever have to even show your face if you don’t want to. As long as you scan as Galra, nobody cares about the lower ranks.”

“That’s how you knew so much about how Galra cruisers work,” Shiro realized. “And how disorganized faction crews are.”

“And when I got here, I guess I expected…more,” Nikolaev admitted, sounding guilty. “Earth, the one where I was born, was way more advanced than this one. I guess the one good thing being occupied by the Altean Empire did was fortify all of their strategic planets. I never expected the massacre, I thought for sure the Fire would be blown out of the sky. I never got the real story of this universe’s history until I managed to put boots on the ground and defect. By then, this universe’s Nikolaev had been dead for a little while. When THEMIS soldiers saw me and recognized my face they just assumed their intel was wrong and that the body had been ID’d wrong, they never questioned that I was really alive. From that point on, everything I already told you before is true.”

“So you were following your own agenda when you let yourself be recruited for the Atlas,” Shiro inferred. “You sensed the crystal?”

“I did. And then I sensed the Gold,” Nikolaev said, glancing briefly at Curtis. “Down in the holding lab. I could never go down there though, I didn’t have clearance. But while I was watching it, I saw Mr. Kurogane coming and going pretty regularly. So I assumed he was probably like me. I was working myself up to finally revealing myself and asking, but then the Colony Two mission was moved up and we left Earth.”

Shiro let out a heavy sigh, leaning back in his chair. They had gone from Kuro being the only known bonded in this universe to there now being five of them, four of them being Reapers. Not that the uneven numbers were really a surprise, with Reapers living on the borders and closer to reality it was only to be expected that they’d cross over more often.

This was, of course, in addition to Onyx and the other four Guardians who were settled in their Lions. And now they also knew that, somewhere out there, another bonded Bronze female in the form of Nikolaev’s sister was traveling alone.

“I guess my threat of putting you in the brig is pointless,” Shiro supposed tiredly. “No prison here is going to hold you.”

“Probably not, sir. No.”

“But I don’t have to. I have two Golds here who will keep a very close eye on you, plus a Silver you haven’t identified yet, and an Onyx who has nothing better to do but give you hell.”

“There’s another one?” Nikolaev asked, looking surprised. “And a Sentinel?”

“The walls of this universe are collapsing and thin, there are a lot of things crossing back and forth here,” Shiro answered. “You’re going to give Curtis a copy of your house key, and then you’re going to notify him any time you come within even a mile of the city limits. You don’t leave town for anything without his permission, and if he calls you get your ass to him immediately. Clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Nikolaev replied, defeated.

“And we’ll…do our best to help you locate your sister,” Shiro relented slightly.

He hated being lied to, especially on this massive of a scale, but to an extent he couldn’t really place blame. Just announcing one was a Quintessi and had come from another dimension was a one-way ticket to a rubber room, it wasn’t like Nikolaev had much of a choice in that matter. By his own admission he had been only days away from approaching Ryou with the truth, that he hadn’t gotten that chance wasn’t really anyone’s fault.

“Go home,” Shiro ordered, reaching over to snap the file closed. “Finish recovering. You’re still expected back on duty on Monday.”

“Yes, sir,” Nikolaev answered obediently.

He rose, casting one more look at the others before shuffling back out. They watched him go, and once the door closed Ryou turned back to Shiro.

“You didn’t have to be so mean about it.”

“Mean? I wasn’t mean!” Shiro protested. “He’s been lying to me, I was being firm! I needed to get the truth.”

“He’s been alone for dozens of lifetimes!” Ryou replied. “He was separated from his sister at the beginning of the last universe he was in. He probably hasn’t seen another of his kind for more than ten billion years, you didn’t have to set us up as his enemies.”

“Superiors, technically,” Curtis said gently. “Not enemies. But definitely at odds in a way, yes…maybe you could have been a little bit nicer about it.”

“We’re kind of in the middle of a war,” Shiro reminded them. “I don’t have time to be nice, I need everyone I can possibly get lined up to be lined up and ready to go on demand. If you want to be nicer to him, then be nicer to him when I’m not around. I have to be his commanding officer. It sucks, it really does, I know. I hate being a ship Captain, I miss just being a pilot. But I’m stuck with this so I have to do my job, and my job is to make sure the man I’m trusting on the bridge of my ship knows better than to lie to me again.”

Maybe, too, it was the little bit of remaining prejudice against Reapers in general. Shiro was trying to shed that, since he knew better than many people what it was like to be mistreated or disliked just because of what he was born as, but an undercurrent of distrust still ran hundreds of thousands of years deep in the White Lion’s memory. He was running on the “exception” rule…Kuro was basically his brother, so he was an exception. Curtis was a trusted ally and loved by Adam, so he was an exception. Lotor was loved by Allura and almost a friend, so he was an exception.

He was being harder on Nikolaev because he had no personal ties to force him to make an exception. And he knew it, but that didn’t make it any easier to just stop. He would have to consciously work to not do that, because in the end it really wasn’t fair…these were all allies who he and the other Guardians were going to need if they wanted to save their worlds, he had to learn to respect them all and not just the ones it was convenient and easy to respect.

“I have to finish some reports,” Shiro sighed, dumping the Galra uniform into the waste bin next to his desk. “Do you guys mind checking in on him in a few days to see how he’s feeling? Maybe…get a feel for what he’s been through?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Ryou promised, getting to his feet. “I’ll also talk to Lotor about him. Are you keeping this from the Paladins? It kind of seems like something they should know.”

“We’ll be having a meeting soon to discuss the Green Lion,” Shiro answered. “Keith and Pidge still haven’t had a chance to debrief us on what they saw in the rift, I wanted them to recover first. I’ll make sure to send you the date and time, we’ll go over it with them then. By then, maybe I’ll know what to do about him.”

Ryou nodded and Curtis rose, following him out of the office. Shiro turned his chair around to look out the window at the cold, clear sky, wondering when, exactly, everything had gotten so goddamned out of control.


	21. Chapter 21

Lance opened the apartment door quietly, wary of the two pairs of extra-sensitive ears that would hear him if he made too much noise. Juggling the pile of packages in his arms, he quietly pushed the door shut behind him and nudged off his shoes next to the neat row of them on a mat beside the entrance.

Nothing much had changed, rule-wise, in the few days since Kuro had replaced Shiro in the apartment, so there was nothing to really adjust to. The only big difference Lance saw so far was that Shiro had always slept with his door closed while Kuro left it open to allow the wolves to come and go. But that door being open meant he also had to be even quieter, because he still didn’t know what Kuro’s sleep patterns were like.

Tiptoeing over to the tree set up by the bay window, Lance carefully crouched down and started putting the packages underneath it. As he did so he accidentally shook one of the boughs and an ornament fell, bouncing off his shoulder and rolling across the floor.

“Crap,” he breathed, trying to finish unloading his hands so he could retrieve it.

“You can just leave it,” Kuro’s voice came from the dark, startling him. “I’ll get it later.”

Lance stumbled to his feet and flipped on the light. Across the living room, Kuro was stretched out on the sofa in shorts and a t-shirt. He had one earbud in and looked like he’d been watching something on the tablet in his hands.

“It’s six in the morning,” he blurted. “Everything okay? Something wrong?”

“Oh, no, I only sleep every other night,” Kuro answered. “I’m only sitting out here right now because I don’t want to have food in the bedroom.”

He held up the half-eaten sandwich in his hand almost apologetically.

“You don’t actually have to explain to me why you’re sitting in your own living room,” Lance pointed out. “I don’t live here. It’s just really early, I was surprised.”

“Yeah, Keith’s still asleep,” Kuro answered, taking another bite of his sandwich. “He’ll probably stay in bed until eight or nine since he doesn’t have to be on base. At least, that’s how late he slept the last two days.”

“Oh, I’m not here to wake him up,” Lance said, embarrassed. “I’m just…uh…”

“Here to crawl into bed after you spent the night at your own house for the holiday?” Kuro finished for him. “Well, enjoy. Can you turn the light back off when you’re done?”

He put his other earbud in and went back to his tablet, completely indifferent to the fact that somebody else who didn’t live here had just wandered in at six in the morning. Lance took that as a gift, shrugging off his coat and hanging it up before flipping the light back off and padding past Kuro to the hallway that ran through the apartment.

Lance was already in the same sweatpants and t-shirt he’d slept in at home last night, so there was nothing stopping him from letting himself into Keith’s room and shuffling over to fall into the bed next to him.

Keith shifted, pulling the knife out from under his pillow and holding it up briefly, but after opening one eye and identifying Lance he sleepily dropped it over the side of the bed to the floor.

“What time is it?” Keith yawned.

“Too early,” Lance grumbled. “The kids had us all up at four, they’re at the age where there is no such thing as a sensible wake up time on Christmas.”

“Poor baby,” Keith smirked, his eyes still covered with an arm draped across them. “Did they ruin your beauty sleep? I know you just can’t function without your daily twenty-three hours.”

“Please just let me rest,” Lance begged, burying his face in the spare pillow. “I was up until three helping set up the gifts, I barely got a chance to close my eyes before the shrieking started.”

Keith laughed softly but it faded into a concerning cough. When Lance lifted his head he was rubbing his chest, in obvious discomfort though it wasn’t enough to make him get up.

“Still hurts?” Lance asked, pushing himself up on one elbow. “Even now?”

“Off and on,” Keith replied, finally lifting the arm away from his eyes. “It’s not debilitating, it just comes out of nowhere. If I’m not prepared for it, it can get pretty sharp.”

“Shiro still doesn’t know what to do about it?”

“Shiro…doesn’t know what to do about a lot of things,” Keith replied, yawning again. “He’s still getting used to this bonding thing. He’ll talk perfectly normal for like, five minutes, then suddenly get this airheaded look on his face and sporadically remember something from…I don’t know. Thousands of years ago. Sometimes it’s helpful, most of the time it has nothing to do with what we’re talking about.”

“I can relate, actually,” Lance said dryly. “It’s not really as weird as you’re making it sound, either. Are you telling me you’ve never been talking to someone about something and had it suddenly remind you of some other thing from back when you were a little kid?”

“…okay,” Keith admitted after a moment. “I guess in that context it’s not really that weird.”

“Plus he’s old,” Lance added. “He’s almost thirty, don’t people start going senile at that age?”

Keith chuckled and kicked off the blanket that had wound its way around his leg at one point while asleep, spreading it out over the both of them and settling back into his pillow. He seemed to be okay, until Lance saw him wince again in the dark.

He didn’t want to bring attention to it, he knew Keith was touchy about it. He’d given him the basics of what had happened in the rift but their full official debriefing for it wasn’t scheduled until tomorrow. That was a lot of time between it happening and everyone getting all the details, but so much had been happening lately that they could only meet up about so much at a time before everyone’s brains needed a break.

Hot tea was generally what his mother suggested when he didn’t feel good, but Lance doubted that would help in this case. And he didn’t want to push Keith into letting him go get him something that wouldn’t help just so he felt like he was doing something.

But he hated seeing Keith in pain. Stab wounds and bullet wounds and gashes and bruises were bad enough on their own, but Keith had a habit of only giving himself a limited time to suffer before he started sucking it up and staying quiet.

Lance flexed the fingers of one hand for a moment, trying to get the blood pumping to make sure there wasn’t any lingering chill from being outside. He rested his hand on Keith’s chest, feeling his heartbeat and breathing through his thin t-shirt, along with that little tingle he’d come to learn was the quintessence that ran through a living body with it’s own individual pulse. It hadn’t been long at all since he’d tried—and failed—to heal Keith after he’d almost been killed by Laurentia’s men pretending to be part of Babel, but that incident had made him double down on his studying and vow to get better, faster.

He doubted there would be anything miraculous he could do that was better than what Shiro might…even though Shiro was also stumbling along, trying to take what he knew from his past as a Guardian and make it work now in his life as a human. He and Curtis both, the two new bonded weren’t all that different than they had been before. They just seemed like perpetually tired and confused grad students, trying to put all the random facts they now knew together into an understandable thesis.

But he wanted to try. Any relief Lance could bring was something.

In the quiet of the bedroom, under the soft glow of the hanging string lights, it was easier to feel the ebb and flow of the quintessence under his fingertips. Memories stirred in the back of his mind, as they always did when he tried something like this, but unless he specifically focused on them they were like someone trying to call out to him above the noise of a crashing storm. Lance wasn’t interested in what Alfor had once done that was similar to this, because he already knew that knowledge was useless; Alfor had learned from the White Lion, and even the White Lion didn’t know how to deal with this.

Lance was disturbed to feel just how dark the poison in Keith’s system was. It hadn’t been like this a couple days ago, when he’d last tried to take a look for himself. It was as if every time Shiro or Allura eradicated most of the contamination, it started to grow and spread again.

Well, it wasn’t welcome. And as long as at least one of them was around, they weren’t going to let it just spread and take over.

Lance concentrated on the light there, carefully stoking it like a dying flame. Gradually he could feel the embers begin to grudgingly respond and spark, expanding over and around the corruption and eating away at it until everything within Lance’s reach was gone.

There was still some there, too deep to dislodge, but Keith’s clenched jaw relaxed and his breathing began to ease.

“Thanks.”

Voices came from outside, loud laughter that was quickly muffled as some other residents of the complex made their way drunkenly home after celebrating the holiday. Lance tried to doze, but found that after his trip here through the winter night he wasn’t as sleepy as he had been.

“Do you think we’re all gonna make it?”

Maybe it wasn’t the kind of topic people usually discussed on Christmas, but it was something Lance had been dwelling on for more than a week. Keith, for his part, didn’t seem perturbed by the question. His eyes were still closed and he was no more upset than usual when he answered.

“I think we’ll all try.”

There was no need to specify what they were talking about, the upcoming phase of the war loomed large over everyone. Normal, everyday concerns were trivial in comparison and barely even discussed anymore.

“We always try, I want to know if you think we’ll all succeed.”

Keith opened his eyes. He looked up at the ceiling, at the hanging tinsel that had been taped there. Lance gave him a moment, knowing he was thinking about the question.

“I think…any one of us would sacrifice ourselves for what we believe in,” he said eventually. “I think any one of us would sacrifice ourselves for the others. And I think, when you add that into the equation, it gets a lot harder to predict.

“We’ve got the Lions, we’ve got Sincline, we’ve got a new Lion and two new Mechs, we’ve got the Atlas and the MFEs. In the whole universe, as a group we’re probably the best equipped to survive anything. But we’re not the kind of people who would leave the rest of the universe behind as collateral damage just so we can make it out.”

He wasn’t wrong. The number of times they’d each laid down their lives for the rest of the world was already more than one. Each time the gamble had paid off, but eventually it wouldn’t. Keith was right, they were all equipped to survive but their own personal choices might be what would finally take them out.

“It’s Christmas,” Lance mumbled. “You’re supposed to just lie and say yes so you don’t ruin the mood.”

“Yeah, sure,” Keith said immediately, closing his eyes again. “Of course we’re all gonna make it. If this thing was capable of killing us, it would’ve done it by now.”

“There you go,” Lance praised. “Now you’re talking.”

Keith scoffed but smiled a little. It wasn’t hard to tell that he could fall back asleep at a moment’s notice, but he also didn’t usually get irritated at Lance’s tendency to keep breaking the silence until he was suitably tired. Which was something Lance couldn’t help, his brain was going a mile a minute these days and sometimes sleep was hard to come by.

He pushed himself up onto his side, throwing an arm over Keith’s chest and resting his head against the other pilot’s upper arm. It blocked out some of the light from the string lights, and he could feel the warmth of Keith’s skin under the softness of the cotton.

“What do you think you’ll do afterward?” Lance asked after managing to stay quiet for a full minute. “After we all make it. When we’re back on Earth and the parades are over and all the magazines in the Coalition are done putting our faces on everything and calling us heroes. I think Shiro will stay in the military, and Hunk’s probably going to make a move into politics. Every Research & Development firm in this galaxy will be after Pidge. What do you think you’re gonna do?”

Keith was quiet again, not answering right away. For a moment, Lance thought he had gone ahead and gone back to sleep.

“Search and rescue, I think,” he said finally.

“What, like the Coast Guard?”

“No, just in general,” Keith answered, his eyes still closed. “It’s a big universe. There will always be natural disasters, or stranded spaceship crews. Just normal, civilian people who need help. It sounds like the kind of thing the Blade would turn to once they didn’t have to fight anymore. Or maybe I’ll just start my own contract firm.”

That was a very Keith answer. Which was funny, because Lance knew it wasn’t an answer he would have given to anyone else. If Kolivan, or Krolia, or Shiro asked, Keith would probably just shrug his shoulders and say he’d cross that bridge when he came to it, so he didn’t have to explain to anyone why he didn’t want to follow any of those successful military paths he’d do so well in.

“I’m gonna be a ship captain,” Lance decided. “Not a big one like the Atlas, just a small one with a small grew. An explorer ship, just like I always wanted when I applied to the Garrison Academy. There’s still a lot of universe out there to check out.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Keith agreed. “You could definitely give James T. Kirk a run for his money.”

Lance scoffed and closed his eyes. What time was it by now? Six-thirty? Seven? He opened his eyes again.

“Do you think they’d give me a ship with a teludav?” He asked. “I might have to learn how to work one of those.”

“Okay,” Keith declared, dropping the arm away from his eyes and sitting up. “You’re not going back to sleep for a while. Do you want some breakfast?”

Lance felt a little bit guilty at first for disrupting Keith’s sleep, but then remembered that he’d been home all night because his mother didn’t even know what Christmas Eve was. Keith hadn’t bothered to tell her, instead he’d stayed to decorate the small Christmas tree in the living room with Kuro since it was his first. He’d probably already had a good seven or eight hours of sleep.

“Yeah, actually,” Lance answered. “But you’re not gonna cook it, right? We’re gonna let me do the kitchen thing? No offense.”

“I _can_ cook,” Keith defended. “It’s not my fault you don’t like Galra food.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m just not feeling a meal that’s, like…heavy on the grubs and dirt,” Lance frowned.

“They were _stenliks_. They’re a _root vegetable._”

Gelatinous root vegetable, bug thing, same difference when Keith cooked them, in Lance’s opinion. Of course, Keith wasn’t lying, both Kolivan and Krolia were fond of Keith’s cooking, and even Lotor had given some of the things he’d made a passing grade. Lance just preferred that his food not look like it had been picked fresh from the garden based on how alive it looked.

Lance shuffled out of the bedroom in Keith’s wake, peeking over the breakfast bar to check the living room for Kuro before he turned on the light. The older man wasn’t there, he must have finished his sandwich and returned to his room. At least they didn’t have to worry about waking him with any noise, since he said he wasn’t sleeping tonight.

Keith made a very theatrical production out of pulling ingredients from their places, reinforcing the lecture Lance had gotten last week with a performance fit for the Globe theater. As he did, Lance leaned back against the stove with his arms crossed and watched, making a mental note to put everything back in the wrong place. Maybe if he was feeling particularly ornery he’d cram what was left of the butter down into a toaster slot and swear that’s what he thought Keith had said.

He must have been smirking at the thought, because Keith stopped talking and picked up the loaf of bread, smacking him in the side of the head with it. All that did was make Lance laugh and usher him out of the kitchen so he could get started.

Hunk was the chef of the group by far, but Lance had learned how to make a few decent meals from his parents. Enough to make a good omelet anyway, and he almost made too much in an attempt to have some extra for Kuro before he remembered the older man was a strict vegetarian. When he brought the two plates into the living room, Keith was sitting on the floor by the coffee table looking curiously at the stack of gifts that had appeared since he’d gone to sleep.

“I knew Hunk and Pidge would be stopping by to see you,” Lance explained, pulling their gifts from the pile and setting them aside. “And these ones, I’m going to take to Allura and Romelle when I take Veronica’s. This is yours.”

“Oh.”

Keith looked at the package Lance held out to him as if he wasn’t sure. Most Christmases in Keith’s life had been tough, he knew, spent alone or at the group home, and it seemed like this was going to be one of those things where Keith just didn’t have the experience to know how he was supposed to react.

“Yeah, just dig in there,” Lance advised, scraping a nail lightly across a point where the wrapping paper could be grasped and torn. “Don’t do that weird, calm thing some people do where they try to pretend they can’t rip the paper because they’re going to save it. It’s going in the trash.”

Keith raised an eyebrow at these instructions as he took the package, but now that he had permission he ripped off the sparkly paper in large strips and let it drop into a pile on the floor. The box wasn’t too big, just a normal apparel box, and Keith pulled off the lid and tossed that aside as well.

“Whoa.”

Lance grinned at his reaction as he dug into the tissue paper, shoving it aside to lift the leather belt out. It was hand-tooled in a desert design and beautifully colored, with a matching knife sheath already attached. Both the sheath and the belt’s buckle had a bit of silver work, and carefully adorned turquoise.

“To your hands, straight from the Navajo Nation,” Lance said around a mouthful of omelet. “You want real American quality you go to the real masters…that is gonna last you a really long time. The guy I ordered it from does some of the best leather work you can find in New Mexico.”

Keith abruptly dropped the belt and disappeared, leaving Lance wondering if he’d said something wrong. But then he appeared again, this time with his knife in hand, and dropped back down on the floor to try it for size. The blade slid right in and fit perfectly, just as Lance knew it would. He had been very careful to measure it while Keith was in the shower.

“This is awesome!” Keith declared, drawing the knife and returning it several times to test the sheath’s hold. After a minute he got back up to try on the belt, which looked kind of ridiculous over nothing but a pair of boxers and an old band t-shirt. “It fits perfect!”

“Perfectly,” Lance corrected. “C’mon Keith, one of us here is a native English speaker and it’s not me.”

Keith stuck his tongue out and went over to the tree. He picked up two packages but set the smaller one aside, hesitating before offering the bigger one. He almost looked as if he didn’t want Lance to actually take it, which just made Lance even more curious.

“It’s not leather,” Keith said apologetically. Lance scoffed, holding out a hand for the small, flat box.

“It’s less than an inch thick, I’d kind of guessed as much. It’s fine, Keith, don’t feel bad about whatever it is.”

Keith reluctantly let him take the package, and Lance set his plate aside. He tore off the dark blue paper, and underneath it was the packaging for an 8 by 10 picture frame. Figuring he had badly missed the mark but still had the right spirit, Lance was about to praise him on his choice of very nice frames. Which was true, it was one of those sleek frames from craft stores, not a cheap one.

He noticed that the plastic seal had been broken before he said anything, fortunately, and popped the box open to slide the frame out. As he turned it over in his hands it took him a moment to realize the gift was actually _inside_ the frame.

It was a pencil drawing, still a little rough on skill but definitely showing the talents of a promising artist, accented with a wash of color that might have come from pastels. The positioning was a little bit different but the subject matter was very familiar.

It was a re-draw of the sketch Lance still kept folded up inside his armor for luck, of him and the Red Lion. This one was much better, without all the dark erasure marks and misplaced pencil streaks, highlighting just how much Keith had improved. Another difference this one had was that there was another person in the picture.

It was pretty obvious if one looked closely that the woman had been added in afterward. Keith had probably spent a few weeks perfecting this version of the drawing, and then in the last week gone back to carefully put in the addition. The image of Red showed a striking attention to detail, right down to the burn marks that ran along half her face and body.

Lance must have stared in silence for too long, because Keith started to squirm.

“I saw how messed up the other sketch is,” he blurted, trying to explain. “You kind of put it through the wringer, I thought maybe it was time to retire that one. And I know how important Red is to you, and now that I know what she really looks like…”

He trailed off, looking uncomfortable, uncertain of whether he’d made a misstep.

Keith wasn’t an easy person to read, but Lance picked up from his tone that there was something else. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out what, either. Or maybe it did, and Lance just knew him better that most might think. It was in the way he said the words, “_I know how important Red is to you_.”

He missed Black, or at least the earlier version of him. He felt guilty, like he of all people should have realized something was wrong much sooner and acted to stop it. It was that part of Keith that still hadn’t recovered from a life of abandonment, of watching everyone else and seeing that they didn’t lose everyone, of coming to the conclusion that he was the common denominator and that he, not everyone else, must somehow be at fault.

Lance didn’t even think Keith knew he did it. Immediately believing that when things went wrong it was on him and he needed to just suck it up and move on was so ingrained he acted on it without thinking about it. But whether he showed it outwardly or not, these things did affect him. Lance could hear it in those words about Red.

“This is great,” Lance said enthusiastically, grinning up at Keith. “I love it! And I think Red likes it too!”

He could feel it in the faint, agreeable feeling that bubbled up like a purr in the back of his mind. Keith’s depiction of her was by no means perfect, but she felt pleased that he’d taken her into consideration and made the attempt.

Keith looked a little bit confused, and then embarrassed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Um, I actually didn’t think you’d like it,” Keith admitted. “Or that you’d be at least a little bit disappointed that all you got was a drawing. So I kind of also bought a backup.”

He handed lance the other package, a smaller, slimmer, lighter one he could immediately tell was some kind of plastic case as soon as he felt it. Raising an eyebrow, Lance tore the paper off that one as well to reveal the video game inside.

“No way!” Lance exclaimed, immediately elated. “You made me a drawing and got me _Swordcraft Saga 2_? This just came out two days ago, it’s sold out!”

“Yeah,” Keith scratched the back of his head, looking at the tree instead of Lance. “I…might’ve had Shiro help me ask Adam to pay a stupid amount to get a copy from a guy online. Now I owe them both a favor and it’s probably not gonna be pretty.”

Lance burst out laughing, just imagining how that conversation had probably gone down. He knew Adam well enough to know that he didn’t really care about money or have a real concept of what many things cost. Keith could have told him video games routinely went for three hundred dollars a pop and Adam probably would have just shrugged it off with a “whatever, it’s Christmas.”

“That makes it even better because you put work into getting it,” Lance answered, happily hugging both of his gifts against his chest. “Maybe I can get them to go easy on you.”

Kosmo came padding out of the back bedroom then, his nose twitching as he followed the smell of eggs. Hoshi was right behind him, yawning widely, and a moment later their disturbance made an appearance. Kuro was dressed, a messenger bag slung over his shoulder as he came into the living room and sat on the edge of a chair to pull on his boots.

“I’m going into town,” he announced, making Lance check the clock. It wasn’t even eight in the morning yet, on Christmas. He didn’t know what would even be open in town. “I’ll be back late, I promised Curtis I’d go to dinner with his family.”

“Finally going to meet them?” Keith asked, grabbing his plate and holding it up out of Kosmo’s reach. “That should be interesting. Nervous?”

“No. They’ll either like me or they won’t. If they don’t, there’s not really anything I can do about it.”

He finished with his boots and leaned forward, lightly hooking Keith by the back of the belt and pulling him over for a closer look.

“This is nice,” he complimented, lifting the sheath. “Really nice detail. Present?”

“Lance got it for me,” Keith practically beamed, which gave Lance a decent shot of pride at having picked a good gift.

“It looks good. The fit is perfect…I hope you got him something just as nice.”

“I got him a video game he really wanted,” Keith answered before Lance could, and left it at that. Smirking, Lance held up the game, but then set it aside and held up the frame.

“He also drew me this,” he told Kuro, unwilling to let that slip under the radar. Kuro held out a hand and Lance leaned over to pass it to him, so he could sit back in the chair a bit and inspect it.

It took him a minute or so to take in all the detail but as he handed it back to Lance he looked up at Keith and smiled.

“This is really good,” he praised. “You should think about making a drawing of each of the Lions so people can buy prints. You could raise a lot of money for charity selling Lion art done by an actual Paladin.”

Lance would have thought Keith had never been told something he did was good before. And for all he knew, maybe he hadn’t; he didn’t exactly tell people he was learning to draw, and he kept all of his public spaces impersonal and blank. Aside from his skills in a pilot seat and with a bayard, Lance didn’t think many people even knew what Keith got up to.

“You know, I know you left that space over by the bay window open for me to put some of my stuff,” Kuro stood and continued, not even noticing the faint flush on Keith’s face. “But if art is one of the things you do to relax, I really don’t mind if you put a desk over there for some good light instead.”

“It’s okay,” Keith answered, glancing over at the empty space. “The one in my room is fine.”

“Really?” Kuro scrunched up his nose as he went through his bag, checking for some things. “That window in there is kind of small, isn’t it? And that desk isn’t exactly a drawing desk. And anyway, I don’t have a lot of stuff, almost all of it fits in my room. You’d make better use of that spot, you might want to think about it.”

He found his keys and re-shouldered the bag, letting himself out of the apartment.

“Merry Christmas,” he called as he left. “Say hello to the others for me if you see them.”

With that he was gone. Quickly, painlessly, and inserting himself as little as possible. Lance looked up at Keith’s face and started laughing again.

“What?” Keith demanded, now turning bright pink. “What’s so funny?”

“You!” Lance chortled. “You’re so used to Shiro ragging on you, you don’t even know what to do with yourself when someone’s nice to you without joking!”

Keith blinked, then relaxed, a small smile forming as he sat on the sofa with his plate.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I guess I was kind of waiting for some follow-up teasing. When are you going to go see your sister?”

“I think maybe early afternoon,” Lance supposed. “Why? You want to come?”

“Yeah, but I was also thinking that if Kuro’s not coming back until late, maybe we could see what Hunk and Pidge are doing with their families and if they want to come over for lunch or dinner.”

“Oh! That would be cool,” Lance agreed, pulling out his phone. “I’ll text Hunk and see. I think the grocery store is open until noon today, we can make a run there before going to Veronica’s.”

It would be nice, the four of them hanging out in a casual setting instead of at the base. It had been a while, and to be honest, Lance missed it. As much as he would never wish to go back to the beginning and go through all the horrors of war again, sometimes he did just miss those first days in the Castle of Lions when seven people had been all alone in the universe and looked to each other for company and comfort.

There were more of them now…Romelle and Veronica, Curtis and Adam, Lotor and Kuro...and that was only their immediate group. Their time gallivanting across galaxies had brought them innumerable friends and allies Lance had never in his wildest dreams thought he would ever get a chance to meet, and given them all immeasurable reasons to keep fighting and people to keep protecting. It was wonderful, of course, Lance wasn’t disputing that at all.

But there were only a handful who really understood what it was like, being inextricably linked to the universe’s greatest war machines and always being expected to be on the front line of every battle. And sometimes, a quiet afternoon with just a few like-minded friends was really more than enough.

* * * * * * * * * *

Finding Ryou wasn’t hard, as long as he didn’t mind being found. Although Nikolaev’s and Lotor’s presences were quieter and hard to find without knowing what he was looking for, Ryou shone like a beacon to other Reapers ever since he’d pulled off his surprise Ascension in the last fight. That was assuming he didn’t actively hide where he was, because even though he was a grown man who was allowed to do whatever he wanted and didn’t have to answer to anybody Ryou still sometimes acted like a teenager sneaking around.

Curtis didn’t entirely understand, but he could see where the other man was coming from, to a point. It was literally only in the past two days that Ryou had finally been freed from the necessity of constantly hiding himself, he still had a knee-jerk reaction to the idea that he might be easily found. Whether it was a throwback from hiding to keep from being caught and imprisoned again by Honerva or occasionally forgetting that he’d already been outed and nobody was hunting him down for it, the result was still the same.

There were also privacy concerns, of course. Sometimes he just didn’t want his boss, or his boyfriend, or the weirdly blond Atlas ensign to easily know where he was.

Currently, Ryou either didn’t care if he could be found or had forgotten he could be. It wasn’t difficult to trace his movements from the apartment complex out near the base to the highway, or follow him from the highway out into the rebuild zone.

The area around Ryou’s favorite little dive bar had seen some improvements in the last two weeks. Construction and restoration had finally moved in closer and were making some headway, and residents from a sixteen-block section just south of it had been temporarily relocated while damaged homes were repaired and critical infrastructure was replaced. But only a small percentage of that zone had been completed so far, so it was no surprise that Ryou would be back to wandering the mostly-decrepit streets there.

Curtis was working on not overstepping boundaries, and he waffled a bit on whether it was appropriate to go into the rebuild zone when there was really nothing he had to offer the people there. He was acutely aware, after the last fiasco at that bar, that he had a much higher amount of wealth and privilege than the locals, and that he could be seen as encroaching on what little they did have.

But he was curious. He didn’t actually know what Ryou did down there, other than relieving overconfident gamblers of their money in pool games. And it wasn’t like someone needed a membership card just to take a walk through the Zones, they were open parts of the city and anyone was free to come and go. He didn’t have to stay, or even interact. He could just take a peek and move on.

So Curtis ditched his usual suit and tie for an old pair of jeans and simple black Christmas sweater with two knit deer on it. He grabbed the sneakers he used for working in the yard or washing the car and opted for a cab instead of driving his tone-deafeningly expensive car.

That meant a four-block walk from where the cab could actually drop him off due to the damage, but Curtis found that pleasing these days. Just being able to walk that far, to feel invigorated by the crisp air instead of exhausted, it was a gift that he greatly appreciated. He’d never realized just how wonderful it was to be self-sufficient, able to go out and move under his own power, until he’d gotten sick.

As he got closer to his destination, Curtis picked up something else. A fainter glimmer that until now had been eclipsed by Ryou’s presence. He felt a pang of irritation as he recognized Nikolaev, who had pretty much no reason to be out here other than if he’d been asked by Ryou for some reason.

By why ask Nikolaev if he needed a favor? Why not ask Curtis?

The thought was intrusive, and made Curtis stop in the middle of the sidewalk so suddenly that a boy going by on skates almost plowed into him. He marveled at the minor emotional explosion for a moment, turning it over in his head.

That was jealousy, there was nothing else it could be. It wasn’t something Curtis felt often and Gold had never felt it at all, making it very difficult to mistake for anything else.

But that aside, the severity of even that fleeting sensation was fascinating. Gold had vastly underestimated just how vividly mortals felt emotions, or just how scaled down and practically pale Quintessi emotions were in comparison. Just thinking about Ryou put him into fits of daydreaming elation that made him wonder how everyone around him didn’t find him perfectly useless. How did mortals who had partners ever get anything done when just imagining another person’s face made the heart race and breath flutter?

It was crazy, no wonder the gods hadn’t given most of them any great power. Curtis had freaked out yesterday over a video of a tiny kitten waddling around with his little pointed tail sticking straight up and almost fried his phone.

His life was very different than it had been two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, a part of him had been forced to temper even the mildest of feelings, to carefully monitor his moods and reactions to everything lest he upset the careful balance within and end up like the Black Guardian. Today, he was allowed to be upset that Ryou had turned to someone else for company, there were no repercussions to not checking himself.

That was wild. Human beings just walked around feeling all kinds of things, half of them batshit insane, with no backlash whatsoever. There were no rules.

His fascination with the new emotion essentially cut it off and stopped him from getting upset. The feeling faded, giving way to logic.

Ryou was allowed to have whatever friends he wanted, and allowed to do things with people besides Curtis. That jealousy was perhaps more about hurt feelings than anything, he really was falling in love with this man at a very speedy clip and wished it was reciprocated on the same level. But what Curtis wanted was not Ryou’s problem or responsibility; whatever would be, would be, and Ryou would get there at his own pace.

And besides that, Ryou was nicer than even Gold. Nikolaev had been alone for a very long time and Ryou understood that, the idea that he’d welcome Niko with open arms wasn’t surprising.

Curtis squashed the urge to hide himself as he turned the corner to where he remembered the bar being. He had a tendency to be sneaky even when his intentions were innocent, and it was a habit he was trying to kick. If he had nothing to hide then he knew he shouldn’t, because if Ryou did end up catching him sneaking around it would not look very good.

He spotted Nikolaev first, standing out in the street near the bar. He was helping a boy put on a pair of gloves, ushering him over to a group of people nearby when he finished.

There were a surprising number of children in the area, given that Curtis had seen no young people when he was here last time. But that had been in the evening and this was early morning, and the fact that traffic couldn’t really move through here made the streets safer to run through. The kids were gathered around an old crate, where a hot water carafe was set up next to packages of Styrofoam cups and some cardboard boxes.

As Curtis reached them, Nikolaev pulled a hot chocolate packet from one of the boxes, mixing it up with hot water from the carafe and handing it to a very happy looking little boy.

He hadn’t hidden his approach and knew he’d been spotted, but Ryou looked neither surprised nor upset when he appeared. He was by the other side of the crate, handing out small, clear treat bags. Curtis stood out of the way and took one of the little bags out of the box to look at it.

Gloves, two little plastic toys, some small candy canes, and a few chocolate kisses. That, coupled with hot chocolate that was absolutely _not_ the cheap brand, was probably bringing kids from a few neighborhoods over as word undoubtedly spread.

“Was this why you couldn’t talk the other night?” Curtis asked, examining the bag. “I could’ve helped you put these together.”

“I made Pidge and Keith do it,” Ryou answered. He tilted his head up to place a kiss of greeting on Curtis’ cheek, and Curtis felt that ridiculously happy flutter again. “Too many people telling him all he can do is stab things, he needed to see the softer side of helping.”

“I could have helped you bring everything out,” Curtis tried. “You didn’t have to call Nikolaev.”

“He didn’t call me, he showed up on my doorstep and told me I was officially an unpaid intern,” Nikolaev answered, carefully handing a little girl a full cup. “He gave me two minutes to get dressed. I’m still wearing my pajama shirt under this jacket. Not even sure if I changed my socks, actually.”

“Oh, well, I’m glad you didn’t enlist me then,” Curtis changed his tune as Ryou smiled, completely comfortable in his self-assigned role as an agent of discord.

“I know Christmas is your holiday, I didn’t want to interrupt anything you had going on,” Ryou answered. “With your whole family being here from all over, I thought you’d probably have some kind of traditions to do. One each, guys, leave enough for everyone.”

The teen boy who had been reaching for a second bag dropped his hands away, putting them behind his back. He looked a little old to be in this crowd in the first place, let alone to be trying to take a second share.

“Can I take one for my cousin?” He asked. “She can’t leave the house, she’s getting over pneumonia.”

“Sure,” Ryou readily gave in and handed him another of the bags, which quickly disappeared into his pocket. “Make sure it gets to her safely, don’t break the candy canes.”

He grunted some kind of affirmative and ran off to join two slightly younger boys, both of whom were pulling the little toys out of their bags. All three of them darted off after one threw the small rubber ball, chasing it down the block.

“You know he probably doesn’t even have a cousin,” Curtis pointed out.

“So?” Ryou shrugged it off, quickly checking the carafe as the flow of kids subsided. It was empty, so Nikolaev grabbed it and toted it across the street and into the bar to refill.

“So if the rule is one each, you need to stick to the rule of one each,” Curtis said logically. “If you let him get away with getting around the rules, you’re teaching him that rules don’t matter. It’s not fair to everyone else if he gets to bend them.”

“You used to teach,” Ryou remembered, referencing Curtis’ tenure in the classroom during times when he wasn’t actively deployed. “Did you ever let one or two kids have a second treat at parties, or a little more time to finish a project after everyone else turned it in?”

“Yes,” Curtis didn’t see any point to denying that, because Ryou would have known he was lying. “But those were little kids. Preschool to second grade. That guy was probably seventeen or eighteen.”

“Did you teach “little kids,” or did you teach “wealthy and military kids?” Ryou corrected him. “If you think rules are so important, obviously you should be very firm and instill them at a very young age while they’re still learning, right? Giving in to young kids just teaches them that they can expect accommodations later on as well, which is wrong…unless you feel your students were somehow more deserving of accommodation than the kids out here.”

Curtis tried to find some kind of rebuttal, but he couldn’t immediately think of one. Ryou pulled himself up to sit on the edge of the crate.

“That “guy” is a teenager,” Ryou said. “How many people who live in this city do you think were actually tucked safely in the Garrison bunkers? Definitely not all of them. That _child_ has probably spent a chunk of his formative years running for his life out in encampments in the desert. Toward the end of the occupation, he probably came close to starving more than once. Maybe he’s buried family members who did. Now he’s out here trying to survive in a city that can barely rebuild itself and protect its residents, and the _worst_ he’s doing is trying to get some extra treats to enjoy on Christmas.

“There were six kids here when I let him take a second bag,” Kuro pointed out. “The only person saying that wasn’t fair, weirdly enough, is the wealthy, grown man standing next to me. Things being perfectly equal doesn’t always mean they’re fair, babe. Maybe he really does have a cousin who can’t leave the house. Maybe he gets bouts of hypoglycemia, and sources of quick sugar like candy are hard to come by in his family’s financial state. Maybe he’s just a boy who’s excited to get candy on a holiday because he never gets it any other time.”

Ryou was a master at dumping uncomfortable truths on people, Curtis had noticed. He pulled no punches, but somehow always made it clear that he was attacking behavior and not the people exhibiting it. It was very effective and bringing on a wave of guilt instead of defensive anger, like the universe’s most powerful “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.”

It was a very harsh light shining on Curtis’ earlier decisions. How he’d dressed down and left his expensive car behind out of what now seemed to be a very shallow and almost performative show of understanding for the people here. He’d done all that, and yet was still standing here passing judgement on a kid from here for not living up to his expectations of how people from the zones needed to behave.

Nikolaev returned with a full carafe as a young woman shyly approached with two small children in tow. Niko took over this one, grabbing two of the gift bags and kneeling down to talk to the kids on their own level. Ryou pulled Curtis over to lean back against the crate between his knees, wrapping his arms around Curtis’ shoulders to hug him from behind.

“I didn’t each anybody that rules don’t matter,” Ryou said, resting his chin on Curtis’ shoulder. “I said what the rule was and gave him a chance to decide if it was fair to apply to him or not. When he asked for a second one anyway and I gave it to him, I _hope_ I was teaching him that he’s a person, and not just some faceless number to be controlled and distrusted. Whether his reasons for wanting one are valid is not my right to decide.

“I heard a lot of pretty nasty shit on that base since coming to Earth, especially about the people out in the rebuild zones. That if it sucked so bad living out here, maybe they should work harder to fix their own communities. That maybe they should find better jobs and move to a rebuilt area. That the poor areas always had their hands out for free stuff from the government even before the invasion and that this was just their excuse to demand more of it. Which is pretty rich, since governments exist to cater to the people, not to be served by them. Apparently, in the minds of a lot of your fellow officers and their politician buddies, “protecting civilians” only means “going out and killing aliens.” The minute they’re asked to stop jumping to the front of the line for resources for their own needs and actively help people who are disenfranchised, suddenly they’re foggy on what the oaths they took actually were.”

It was the most precise, surgical take down Curtis had experienced in quite some time, because they both knew that at least one of those statements had probably been overheard being said by Curtis himself. Hearing it repeated back, dripping with disdain for the statement itself, was an eye-opener for someone who spent so much time claiming that his life’s goal was to make the world a better place. It was a stark reminder that even he, a person who had put a lot of time and energy into trying to help those in need, still had preconceived notions and unconscious biases that he never even realized colored his judgement.

And it was all delivered with a loving hug and a gentle snuggle. On Christmas Day, no less. God Himself couldn’t have delivered a more powerful or soul-deep reprimand.

“Are you done ripping me to shreds, or do I feel bad enough already?” Curtis sighed.

“I think you feel bad enough already,” Ryou allowed sweetly. “But, just to twist the knife a little bit, yes he does have a cousin and yes, she is just getting over pneumonia. I checked out her recovery yesterday.”

“Ah, damn,” Curtis winced, feeling another stab of guilt. And of course Ryou couldn’t have just led with that fact, revealing that right from the beginning wouldn’t have been as emotionally damaging as keeping it for a final blow. “You’re a vicious man.”

“But you’re going to start thinking twice before you assume the system that works for you works for everyone else,” Ryou said, giving him a gentle squeeze. “Because you’re one of the good guys, and you want to be even better.”

Curtis sighed and looked over at Nikolaev. Another small group of kids had come to investigate, and he was doing very well with them. Most of them had come along with adults, who all stayed back across the street and out of the way.

The embarrassment was clear on some of their faces. The sadness that their children weren’t living the lives they knew some other peoples’ children were. The gratitude that there was a small bright spot here, at least on Christmas of all days.

Most of them were dressed in clothes that were far more worn and patched than those of their kids, visible markers of the things they gave up to try and make life at least tolerable before the real world kicked in and crushed all the young hopes and dreams here. Some of them went into the bar with empty storage containers and came out with what looked like hot food that someone was giving away.

These were all people who had been taught that the rules were to be followed to the letter, and upon whom those rules had always been very strictly enforced. Rules that kept them where they were and limited their chances at a better life, but that they were harshly punished for ignoring.

Rules that Curtis himself flouted regularly, with impunity. How simple had it been for Shiro to collect the Paladins from jail a few months ago, with no consequences, for offenses that anyone here would still be sitting in a cell for? Perhaps even still waiting just for a day in court?

“It’s okay to be upset about it,” Ryou said softly in his ear, sensing his growing distress. “It’s not easy to suddenly see something you never realized was there. Just make sure you don’t put more energy into pitying your own feelings than in being angry on their behalf. Don’t make their struggles about you, start making more of your effort about them.”

“You know, with Shiro doing the fighting and you doing the caring, the two of you could probably save the entire universe on your own,” Curtis mused, tilting his head back to rest his head against Ryou’s. “And neither of you would ask for anything in return except time to take an undisturbed nap.”

“Sleep is one-sixth of your life,” Ryou agreed. “Well, one-third of everyone else’s, one-sixth of mine. Either way, you’d be surprised at how much a good quality nap and some meditation time can do for your world view.”

It was beginning to grow later in the morning, meaning more adults would be awake to supervise children outside, and that more visitors would probably be coming. And now, Curtis could see, these weren’t just strangers coming by that Ryou was tossing little trinkets. These were his patients, the people who trusted him and called him “Doc.” People who undoubtedly knew he wasn’t from the zones but accepted him and didn’t feel like he was just out here doing a bit of charity to feel good about himself.

“I should go,” Curtis decided, spinning around in Ryou’s arms to steal a kiss. “I don’t belong here. They all know I’m from over on the base the second they see me, I don’t want to scare anyone or make them stay away because I’m here in their space.”

Ryou nodded, agreeing with the sentiment instead of giving a sugarcoated platitude. But that wasn’t offensive, Curtis had some work to do on his attitude and Ryou’s clear acceptance of that was part of his way of saying he had faith that Curtis could do it. There was no need to baby him, because he was capable of knowing he needed to change and doing it.

“Are you still coming to dinner at my parents’ house?” Curtis asked, taking both of Ryou’s hands as he stepped back out of his arms. “Or did I overstep by coming down here and explaining your own work to you?”

“I’m still coming to dinner,” Ryou assured him. “I need to give your family a chance to decide if they hate me or not. But I may show up without pants in retribution.”

“If you show up without pants, it’s definitely not me you’re punishing,” Curtis quipped. “I’ll pick you up later, then.”

Ryou smiled and let him go, that smile that came out after something rough had just happened to assure him that even if the exchange had seemed a little bit mean there were no hard feelings and no anger. That gorgeous smile that made Curtis’ skin feel warm and made him so glad Ryou thought he was worth his attention.

Curtis walked back the way he’d come, to a spot where he could catch a cab back home, thinking about the smile and not even noticing the cold.


	22. Chapter 22

Morning came with the quiet trickle of pale winter sunlight through partially-closed curtains. It crept in, slow and subtle in the absence of a blaring wake up alarm, letting Shiro drift out of his dreams and into wakefulness on his tired body’s own terms.

The road from sleep to alertness wasn’t direct, and he dozed and woke several times before ever opening his eyes. When he did eventually become aware that it was daylight it was in a tired sort of way, and he scrunched up his face and buried it in a pillow as he rolled over on his side.

His hand reached out to the other side of the bed, but his fingers touched only cold, empty sheets. For a moment he was back in his empty bed in the apartment, a few heartbeats of a waking nightmare as his brain told him everything he remembered must have only been a pleasant dream.

Shiro’s eyes snapped open and he sat up quickly, looking around the room. It took a couple seconds for his head to catch up with his pounding heart and realize the soft gray paint on the bedroom walls and the delicate silver curtains moving gently in the air flow of the nearby heat vent meant he was still in his new house and nothing had changed.

He’d gotten used to waking up and finding Adam next to him, even if it had only been a couple weeks. His sleep had been better, the worst of his nightmares had calmed. And Adam was still refusing to enlist, which meant he didn’t have to be up late and always slept early, leaving him in bed for Shiro to wake to.

Even a single morning waking up with him not there was a shake up. That was not healthy and Shiro knew it. He was going to have to do some serious repair work on himself if he was going to keep from sliding back into his old habits of relying far too heavily on Adam to give constant support and do most of his emotional labor.

A quick trip to the bathroom to splash some water on his face and brush his teeth told him Adam had probably used the guest bathroom that morning in order to not wake him up. But he was certainly home, as soon as Shiro opened the bedroom door he was met with the smells of fresh coffee and food.

He didn’t get far before he heard Adam’s phone ring and a quick affirmation as he answered, but as Shiro padded down the hall toward the stairs he could hear Adam jog through the house to the front door. Curious, he ducked into the guest room and went to the window to look out, at the blue rental car that was pulling into their driveway.

Before it was even completely stopped, the passenger door flew open and a little boy who couldn’t be more than eight or nine tumbled out and gleefully ran forward. Adam met him a few yards down the driveway with open arms, scooping him up and hugging him tightly, spinning him a few times as the car parked.

Shiro hadn’t seen Sofia Lobo since well before he’d left for Kerberos. She had always been very pretty, just like her brother, and the short haircut and ragged scarring from the war he could see as she got out of the car did nothing to dim that. Adam had mentioned that Sofia had given birth shortly after the Kerberos launch, but this was the first time he had ever seen what he presumed to be Adam’s nephew Gabriel.

A year and a half since Adam had seen him as well. That put the kid at five, maybe six at the most, but the Nixa genes must have carried. It was no wonder people had believed Adam was older than his actual age when he was a child, they appeared to age quickly in their first few years.

Shiro crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, opening the window just a bit so he could hear the scene he was watching below. Gabriele was absolutely thrilled to see his uncle again, and when Sofia realized Adam’s eyes were fixed he saw her hug him and start to cry. Gabriel asked what was wrong, at which point a sobbing Sofia tried to tell him she was crying because she was happy, and Adam had to pick him up again and assure him his mother was fine.

They would never have been able to have a visit like this before the war. Whatever Janet Lobo’s reasons, she had done her best to keep them apart and had been very successful at it. Simon’s attempts to undo her work had mostly failed, and Sofia had only even been able to start making brief visits after she had moved out on her own with the American man who was now her husband.

He heard Sofia ask if Adam was sure it was okay to leave Gabriel, then promised she would be back from the airport shortly. Going to pick up said husband, who had been travelling on his own for work, it seemed.

Shiro quietly closed the window and went back to the bedroom to dress now that he knew there was company, and moved down the stairs quietly. He was able to sneak around a little better now that Adam didn’t have a thermal vision option anymore, and was able to lean in the kitchen doorway with his hands in his pockets without being seen.

The small, eat-in table was set for five, and there was Christmas music playing. Adam must have made a run to the store, because there were still a few empty shopping bags laying on the kitchen floor. Gabriel sat at the breakfast bar while Adam stood at the stove, cheerfully kicking his legs and running a small car he’d brought along back and forth across the counter in front of him.

The scene was almost unreal, far more inviting and homey than Shiro had imagined he would ever get a chance to experience. From the fresh pine wreath on the kitchen door to the cooling gingerbread cookies on the counter waiting to be decorated, to the set of alphabet magnets on the fridge that must have been newly purchased because they hadn’t been there last night.

“Who’s that!?” Gabriel exclaimed, and Shiro briefly thought he’d been caught. But the little boy was pointing to the window over the sink, where a fluffy calico was rubbing up against the outside screen, her meow silenced by the glass.

“Oh, that’s October!” Adam answered, stretching across the breakfast bar to pick Gabriel back up and take him over to the window. He opened it up with one hand and pushed up the screen to let the cat in, where she delicately tiptoed around the sink to stand at the edge of the counter and meow. “She’s the neighbor’s cat, she comes by to say hello in the morning before she hunts mice out in the gardens. Hold on, her owner gave me some snacks for her, you can give her some.”

He perched Gabriel on the counter and pulled a bag out of the cabinet, and the two of them spent a moment pampering the cat and telling her how pretty she was. After basking in their compliments for a few minutes, she scratched at the window until Adam let her back out again and disappeared out of view.

“Who’s _that_!?”

This time, Gabriel was facing toward the doorway and there was no way that he was pointing to anyone or anything else. Adam glanced over and briefly looked surprised to see him up, then lifted Gabriel down to the floor.

“That’s your Uncle Shiro,” he told the little boy, making Shiro momentarily freeze.

Uncle Shiro. That was not a title he had ever expected to have.

His momentary brain shutdown must have been noticeable. Adam covered his mouth with a hand to hide that he was laughing at his expression and Gabriel looked up at him, pointing to Shiro.

“He’s weird.”

“No, he’s just tired,” Adam corrected, helping Gabriel back around the counter and into his seat at the breakfast bar. “Uncle Shiro has a very big job that takes a lot of work, he’s the Captain of a spaceship.”

“Like Grandpop’s?” Gabriel wondered.

“Oh, no, anjinho. Uncle Shiro’s spaceship is much bigger, it’s like a flying city. So his job is very hard and he needs a lot of rest, but I’m sure he’ll be a little more talkative after he’s had some coffee.”

Shiro gingerly moved to sit at the other end of the breakfast bar, resting his chin on one hand and watching the conversation as Adam moved to fill a mug from the coffee pot. He mouthed a sincere “thank you” when it was set in front of him with some cream and sugar, while Gabriel began to spout off all the things he liked best about “Grandpop’s spaceship.”

That was undoubtedly the Nixa ship Adam had described to them all, the old Nalquodian vessel that had been given an ocean burial in the Arusian waters near the Castle of Lions.

The elephant in the room was that the ship had belonged to Blaytz, and had likely been the only surviving vessel and the one that had ushered Queen Merla to the questionable safety of the Castle of Lions. And, technically, that made the ship Adam’s.

Shiro doubted he would want to take the ship, though. He had no need for it, whereas the pod of Nixa he now knew were his family needed transport for as long as the unrest in the universe required them to migrate for safety.

But the fate of the Nalquodian ship was currently on a back burner as Shiro attempted to process the fact that he now had a nephew. He now had a sister-in-law and a brother-in-law who were this nephew’s parents. This miniature human, who looked so much like his husband it was fascinating, was part of his family now.

He had never really processed what being married had meant before now. Obviously it had been a legal way to tie Adam to him, initially for Adam’s own safety but now simply because he wanted to be. But he’d never looked at any implications that went farther than the fact that it made them a legal couple.

It meant other things he hadn’t thought about. It meant he was an uncle, it meant he was a brother-in-law. It meant, to whatever extent Adam eventually allowed it, that he was a son-in-law, and that he, arguably, had a mother-in-law and a father-in-law. He was part of a married couple, they had a house, they had a place to continue their lives once this war was finally over. They had family, not just bits of Shiro’s but pieces of Adam’s as well, who would call an visit and be part of their lives.

Perhaps the biggest change any of that made was Adam’s smile. The difference between the closed-off indifference he’d always worn as a defense and the way he lit up the room right now was astounding.

And Gabriel had no clue he had anything to do with it.

The little boy eventually went from describing the ship to talking about his lessons, and about how his mother had been teaching him to read and that he would start school next year. He sounded very smart and was clearly outgoing, and was very excited to meet his future classmates. He went on about it until the doorbell rang, and Shiro excused himself to answer it.

It was Sofia, as expected, with her husband in tow. She started to greet him, but Shiro saw the exact moment she took in the full extent of how different he looked. Her exclaimed “Merry Christmas!” went from “Me—!” to “Oh!”

“Yeah,” Shiro said dryly, stepping back and holding the door open so they could come inside where it was warm. “I had a bit of a makeover.”

“Sorry,” Sofia winced as she realized how rude she sounded. “I know I don’t look so great myself, I was just surprised.”

“It’s okay, the Galra haven’t exactly been kind to any of us,” Shiro assured her. “How are you doing, Mark? Haven’t seen you in a while.”

Sofia’s husband, Mark, followed her in, careful not to hit the doorway with his crutches. He’d once been the kind of man who kept his hair long, but like everyone else he’d started cutting it short during the war to keep it out of the way. He grinned at Shiro and tapped his left pant leg, which was tied up at the knee and empty below.

“Took a big chunk of shrapnel in the leg last year,” he explained. “It messed up the nerves pretty badly, my therapist has been trying to get some use back into it ever since. Finally had to give it up and let them take it last month.”

“I can relate,” Shiro said sympathetically, pulling up his sleeve to show the marble-white skin and silvery lines of his Altean arm. “But you’re moving pretty good already, I don’t think it’s going to slow you down for long.”

“Nah, as soon as it fully heals from the surgery I’m gonna get fitted for a prosthetic. I’ll be jogging again by Easter.”

“_That’s_ the spirit,” Shiro encouraged, as Gabriel came in with Adam.

Adam came over to greet Mark for the first time in years while Gabriel wandered off to explore the living room. Mark was just explaining in more detail how Sofia had pulled him to safety after a run to put explosive charges on Galra work equipment had gone wrong when Gabriel suddenly came bolting back in, his eyes wide.

“Santa visited Uncle Adam!” He exclaimed, looking shocked. “There’s no kids here!”

Sofia rolled her head around to look at Adam, who did his best to appear innocent.

“You didn’t,” she sighed.

“Eh,” Adam tried to shrug it off. “It was a slow week.”

“You’re going to spoil that child completely rotten,” Sofia warned. “You’re going to ruin him.”

“And then send him back for you to deal with the result, yeah,” Adam agreed, as if that were obvious. “That’s my job. You want to do the honors?”

Sofia groaned softly and leaned around Adam to look at Gabriel.

“We wrote Santa to let him know you’d be here today instead of at home, baby,” she said weakly. “He must have decided to leave your presents here.”

Gabriel’s eyes went the size of dinner plates. Adam walked past him to lean into the living room, then pretended to be surprised when he turned back.

“Will you look at that,” he said dramatically. “Those weren’t there last night. I guess you better open them and make sure they’re yours.”

Shiro had to purse his lips and close his eyes for a moment so he didn’t burst out laughing at the looks on Sophia’s and Mark’s faces as Gabriel let out a squeal of delight and bolted back in the living room. When he was gone Sofia sighed again and lifted the car keys, jingling them softly.

“Guess I’ll go get the stuff we brought out of the trunk,” she supposed. “And just add it to the pile while he’s not looking.”

“Get a stepladder,” Adam suggested, crossing his arms and smirking. “It’s a really tall pile.”

Sofia shook her head and went out to the car. Shiro gestured to the living room where they could already hear tearing noises, looking to Mark.

“Go ahead in and sit down,” he suggested. “We’re using a temporary collapsible table and folding chairs, I’ll help Adam bring breakfast in there.”

Mark thankfully limped into the living room and Shiro followed Adam into the kitchen, shaking his own head.

“You didn’t warn her you were buying him presents?”

“Of course not,” Adam scoffed. “Get with the program, Takashi, spoiling kids is what aunts and uncles do. Someday, if we decide to have kids, she’ll do the same thing in retribution and then we’ll be even.”

_Someday, if we decide to have kids._

That obviously wasn’t a conversation to be having right now, but just the suggestion that they would eventually have that conversation wasn’t something Shiro had ever thought he’d hear. When he’d left their shared flat for the final time on the morning of the Kerberos launch, he had made his peace with a lost future and come to terms with the idea that what he had was as far as he would go. And even up until now, he had never revisited the things he’d come to terms with losing.

Shiro caught Adam by the back of the sweater, pulling him away from where he was putting hot food on a serving dish. He spun him around to face him, sliding his arms around Adam’s middle and pulling him in close enough to kiss. When they both finally needed to breathe he broke away, resting his forehead against Adam’s.

“What was that all about?” Adam asked, biting back what might have been a giggle as Shiro started swaying them both along with the beat of _Let It Snow_ playing in the background.

“I’ve been spending too much time tending to my giant spaceship and not enough dragging you under mistletoe,” Shiro smiled. “Today’s the last day to do it, I need to start making up for it.”

“There’s no mistletoe in the kitchen.”

“There’s mistletoe somewhere within a twenty foot radius in this house,” Shiro pointed out. “Going by average distances in our solar system alone, that’s practically right here.”

Adam laughed, a real laugh just like back when they were happy in their flat, and stole another kiss. Shiro let him pull away after that and helped him load up the serving dishes as Sofia came back and went to go sneak the bag of presents she had in with the ones Adam had bought.

Half an hour later there was still wrapping paper being torn with abandon, with all four adults settled in around the breakfast table to act appropriately thrilled with everything Gabriel ran over to show them. It wasn’t the Christmas Shiro had been expecting, but it was a better surprise gift than anything anyone could have wrapped and put under the tree.

* * * * * * * * * *

Winter wasn’t turning out to be as terrible a bother to Kuro as it could have been, even if he wasn’t especially fond of cold. He could tolerate it, and obviously survive it, and a few hours out in it was something he could live with.

The hot shower was more about scrubbing away any potential contagions he had picked up, things that didn’t affect him but might get Keith or Curtis sick. Washing away the antiseptic smell, and the scents of alcohol and iodine.

It had been a couple weeks since he’d seen patients out in the rebuild zone, he’d done his final meetings back before he’d expected to leave Earth and had told everyone he was leaving for work and probably wouldn’t be back. They were surprised to see him return today but also hopeful of getting care as the colder months wore on and sickness invaded homes that didn’t have adequate heat or water.

He had not asked people to come see him at the bar. Instead he’d taken a running list as people brought children by, and when the last of the gift bags and hot chocolate had been dispensed he had sent Nikolaev home and had begun to do visits.

Curtis couldn’t have been around for those, and neither could Nikolaev. Necessity dictated that Kuro paid cash to people who were selling their opioids and other medications, a move that not only took those things away from kids who might begin addictions but that put those medications into the hands of a medical professional who could then dispense them to other area residents.

If a mother of two was selling the oxycodone she had managed to get for her back pain to feed her children, then Kuro would give her cash for that medicine so he could give it to the construction worker who’d fallen and injured his shoulder but couldn’t get an appointment at the booked-solid clinic. His messenger bag was filled with illicitly bought and sold prescriptions, medicine that citizens paid millions to help develop only to be denied their treatment because the makers knew they could charge exorbitant prices to line their pockets with profit.

As Kuro had said to Curtis, rules only benefitted the people who made them, and equality wasn’t always fairness. Charging both a millionaire and an impoverished family thousands of dollars for insulin was equality of cost, but it was absolutely not fair. And Kuro would break the laws that allowed that financial gatekeeping with no regrets whatsoever.

Still, that didn’t mean he wanted to pull others down. A law was still a law, and if he got caught he could get in trouble. He wasn’t going to get others into trouble with him. He was still going to fuck that law every which way until it got changed, but a bit of jail time wasn’t going to affect his career in the way it would Curtis or Nikolaev.

He didn’t feel bad about checking Curtis out in the zone, though. Curtis was a good man, and what made him so good was that he always strived to keep learning and be better, and he didn’t take having his shortcomings pointed out as a personal attack. Nikolaev hadn’t needed the same kind of reality check, but that was for many different reasons. He had seen civilizations rise and fall, and he had seen many cultural systems. He knew there were ones that were created to help all members, and he knew there were ones that were meant to suppress the majority for the benefit of the minority. He’d lived them in a way neither Curtis nor Gold had, and he knew which one he was in when he saw it.

Finishing in the shower, Kuro carefully checked to make sure the hall was empty before he left the bathroom to go to his room. He wasn’t indecent or anything, he used a bathrobe, but it was only proper to remember he was sharing this living space and shouldn’t be out in the more public areas if he wasn’t fully dressed.

Kosmo and Hoshi weren’t curled up in the closet when he got to his room, they were likely out hunting their dinner. He had tried making them food, even buying the really good cuts of meat, but they liked to go out and chase things down themselves. Kuro really didn’t have any say in that as long as they stuck to wild animals and didn’t hunt the neighbors’ cats, so there was nothing to do but let them eat as they pleased.

He could hear the four kids in the living room, laughing and joking while they prepared whatever strange and wonderful feast they were planning to share in front of the TV, and was glad that Keith wasn’t going to be alone today. Krolia and Kolivan were busy again, and as Galra they didn’t understand or celebrate Christmas. Takashi had spent a lot of time with Keith this week and was going to spend this particular holiday with Adam for the first time in years. And, of course, Kuro had plans with Curtis.

He came out of his bedroom and made his way down the hall only to find a scene of absolute chaos. The brightly colored “Happy Birthday” hats, “Happy New Year” sunglasses, light-up Mardi Gras necklaces, and disturbing number of Halloween decorations still sporting clearance stickers explained what had been in the discount store bags they’d brought back from their run to the grocery store. All four Paladins were wearing thick bathrobes over their clothes with matching slippers, the price tags from the new purchases piled on the counter.

Pidge was stretched out on the back of the sofa so she could rest one arm on the breakfast bar, puffing away on a bright yellow plastic pipe that was blowing bubbles up into the air. Hunk was wearing a neon pink apron that said “Hot Stuff Coming Through.” Lance was trying to chop vegetables while wearing oversized mittens. Keith was sitting on the sofa itself, wrapped in plugged-in Christmas lights with a cardboard star cut out and taped to his head.

For once, Kuro had set aside his usual jeans and off-color t-shirts and dressed nicely for Curtis’ family, suffering into a pair of slacks and a button up shirt with a tie. Everyone whistled when they noticed he was there and saw what he was wearing.

It was ridiculous on so many levels, but they were all having so much fun. It wasn’t Kuro’s place to tell them what they could or couldn’t do, or what they were allowed to enjoy.

“Did you clean out the TJMaxx?” Kuro asked, spreading some of the many stacked price tags out. Lots of clearance and blow out items, they’d probably just gone in and bought whatever caught their eye. “Does this say it’s for an inflatable duck?”

“That’s a pool float,” Pidge said helpfully, offering him the chunk of plastic in her hands. “Bubble pipe?”

“I’m very tempted,” Kuro said sincerely. “But you don’t know where I’ve been, so that’s probably not a good idea.”

There was a knock at the door and Lance dropped the knife and hurried to answer it. Halfway across the living room Kuro realized he was wearing some kind of costume clown pants over his jeans, they fell down around his ankles and left him shuffling the rest of the way. As soon as he pulled the door open there were three loud “pops,” and a rain of confetti flew into the living room over his head.

“Merry Christmas!” Veronica, Romelle, and Allura all yelled as one, all trying to come in at the same time and ending up in a pile on the floor as Kuro calmly picked some paper streamers out of his hair. Lotor and Bandor stood behind them in the hallway, looking down at them with chagrin.

“Designated drivers?” Kuro guessed.

“They’re not drunk, they’re just like that when you get them started,” Bandor answered with a grin.

“I got them started,” Lotor admitted, a trace of guilt in his voice.

They were both holding covered casserole dishes, doing their assigned part to carry whatever it was the girls had brought. Veronica was the first to her feet, helping the others up, and Lance shuffled out of the way to let them all come in.

It was now ten people in the living space of a two-person apartment not really meant for entertaining so many guests, but nobody looked terribly upset. There was room for everyone to sit, anyway, though it was going to be a little bit cramped even when Kuro left.

“Mom threw these together when you told her you guys were having Pidge and Hunk over,” Veronica told Lance as she and Bandor carried the casserole dishes to the kitchen. “We figured we’d bring them over when you canceled on visiting us earlier.”

“The more the merrier,” Keith answered, trying to blow the star, which had fallen down, out of his eyes. “Sorry, we’re out of robes.”

“No, none of this is standard Christmas celebration stuff,” Kuro assured Lotor, who was looking around in concern. “They’re having fun being silly, they don’t really get to do that a lot. Just go with it, you might actually have some fun for once.”

Bandor, Allura, and Romelle were very much intrigued by the Keith’s outfit, while Hunk and Veronica started digging for more dishes now that there were new arrivals to the party. Pidge continued to bless it all with a gentle rain of bubbles.

Lotor didn’t look very confident in his ability to fit in here. Most of his experience with the Paladins had been of a more serious nature, even when he’d been staying on the Castle of Lions with them. The more he saw them here, in their home environment, encouraged by comfort to let themselves have fun, the less Lotor understood what was going on.

Kuro picked up the Santa hat that was draped over the radiator plunked it on Lotor’s head, neatly draping the pom-pom to the side.

“Seriously,” he nudged. “The universe isn’t going to end if you let yourself have friends. Allura’s having the time of her life, follow her lead.”

Lotor grumbled something under his breath and went to go take a seat on the unoccupied end of the sofa. The doorbell rang, which drew everyone’s attention.

“It’s just Curtis,” Kuro assured them, starting to pick his way through the group to the door. “I’m heading out, you guys have fun.”

“Wait!” Lance exclaimed, kicking off the weird pants that were still around his ankles and hurrying to the door. “First date! There’s rules!”

“There’s…?” Kuro asked in confusion as Keith fought himself free from the string of lights to go join him.

They motioned for everyone to be quiet while Keith at least shrugged off the robe, then pulled open the door. It was indeed Curtis, and he looked around at everyone staring at him in confusion.

“Um…Merry Christmas?” He tried.

“Yeah, Kuro, it’s your boyfriend!” Keith announced, much louder than necessary. “I don’t know about his outfit, though.”

Curtis raised an eyebrow and looked down at himself. A suit, just like always, maybe a little fancier than usual since it was a holiday. If Kuro remembered correctly, he had gone to mass with his family and was stopping by to pick him up on his way back.

“What’s wrong with my outfit?” He wondered.

“Too slick,” Lance replied, hands on his hips. “Trying too hard to look good, makes me think you’re after something. What exactly are your intentions with my boyfriend’s brother?”

There were some snorts as people tried not to laugh. Curtis, not to be outdone, but his hands on his own hips.

“Like, right now?” He asked. “Or did you want my detailed five-year plan?”

“You know, you’re being very glib about this and that’s not appropriate,” Keith chimed in. “I assume you have protection?”

Kuro groaned and dropped his face into his hands.

“A Beretta and two clips,” Curtis answered sincerely. “And a pretty nasty taser. The only thing he’s not safe from with me is probably bears.”

“Well that’s—” Lance had to pause and lower his head, taking a breath as he momentarily broke and started laughing. “You sound pretty prepared to me. I hope you live in a nice neighborhood with no bears.”

“Bears hang out in the same places as everyone else!” Allura suddenly exclaimed, looking distressed. “That they wouldn’t live in a nice neighborhood is a very rude assumption!”

Everyone looked at her with wide eyes, and it took her a moment to realize she’d said something off-color. Her face quickly grew pink.

“That’s…that’s what Kuro said in the car a few weeks ago,” she said meekly.

“Oh, honey, no,” Kuro said softly, suddenly feeling bad that he hadn’t been less snarky during their outing with Adam, or that he’d at least thought to explain the reference to her afterward. “They’re talking about a whole different kind of bear.”

Veronica and Hunk both lost it at that point, laughing so hard they disappeared down behind the kitchen counter. The others weren’t far behind, though the Alteans continued to look confused. Curtis’ head was in his hands now, and Kuro took advantage of the clamor to make his way to the door.

“On that note, I’m leaving,” he announced, shaking his head. “You guys can use my room if you want, spread out a little. I’m sure Curtis will let me stay in one of his guest rooms.”

“Ha, guest room!” Veronica called, straining up on her knees to see over the kitchen counter. “Sure, snugglebunny!”

“Good night!” Kuro called loudly, pulling the door closed behind him. The continuing laughter went quiet, muffled but still going as they stepped down away from the door and started toward Curtis’ car.

“They’re cute,” Curtis commented.

“They are, actually,” Kuro agreed. “It’s nice that they can all stop being soldiers and just be people enjoying each other’s company, even if it’s only for one night.”

Curtis reached the car first and opened the passenger side door, leaning on the top of it as Kuro climbed in. He lifted his head a little, gesturing to his own neck.

“No dog collar tonight?”

“Not tonight,” Kuro smiled, just imagining how that would go over. “Adam briefed me on your previous boyfriends, I’m trying to give your family a break.”

“Well, you look nice. You always look good, obviously, but tonight you look very nice. Very professional.”

“Very doctor-like?”

“Very doctor-like. My mother will love it.”

Curtis let go of the door so Kuro could close it and climbed in the driver side. It was already warm in the cab from the heat being run during the trip here, so Kuro turned the heater down a little bit to dull the noise of it and be heard.

“I hope you didn’t think I was being hard on you today,” Kuro frowned, thinking back to that morning. “It’s just that you can be a very pushy man, and sometimes the only way to cut through that and make sure you actually hear words and aren’t just nodding along is to be direct.”

“It’s okay, I’m actually pretty aware of that flaw,” Curtis admitted. “You’re an action person, you don’t like crossing your fingers and just hoping things will change. Sometimes you have to hit people over the head instead of taking days to explain without hurting feelings. It’s one of the things I like about you, you don’t take bullshit excuses for crappy behavior.”

“But I should still tone it down in front of your parents?” Kuro guessed as they left the parking lot. “I don’t want your family upset with you because of me.”

Curtis didn’t answer right away. He pursed his lips, trying to formulate a response he felt would be fitting.

“I don’t like the idea of you changing the way you are just to keep peace,” he said finally. “They’re all at least moderately wealthy people in their own right. My sisters and I all grew up with a lot of comforts, and we’re all a tiny bit spoiled. I want to say my family are good people and that you’ll like them, and I think that’s the case, but they’re also like me…at some point they’ll say something that will show you they’re kind of clueless and tone deaf on the topic, and you’re going to get irritated. Just…when you hit them over the head, use a slightly softer bat than you use on me. Don’t let the nice house on a golf course make you put them into the wrong category, they’re the kind of people who are willing to listen.”

Kuro wasn’t sure how he felt about that description. He knew that he could be a little much for some people since he was often blunt, but he really did want to make a good impression on Curtis’ family.

They stopped at a red light and Curtis reached into the back seat, producing a box wrapped in pretty, blue celestial paper. He offered it to Kuro, who took it in surprise.

“I know you said no gifts,” Curtis said. “And I don’t want you to get me anything in return. I just thought this was something you might like.”

Kuro smiled a little, turning the box over in his hands to look at the paper. Curtis had a love affair with the stars that showed in many of the things he did, a wonder and awe at the constellations above that apparently no amount of space travel could dull.

He was careful as he took the paper off, deciding he wanted to save it. Even if Curtis said he didn’t want anything in return, the paper was very pretty and he obviously liked it. Perhaps it could be put to use. The paper covered a plain cardboard box, which he opened to carefully extract the contents.

It was a jar. An empty glass jar that had been stained a bright blue color, a large piece of cork cut down to fit it as a stopper. The ridges at the mouth that would have held the lid were wrapped with jute to hide them, and the body was decorated in a diamond crisscross pattern with thin strips of a silver glitter tape. Two strings of jute hung down from the knot that tied off the wrap on the mouth, decorated with jewel-tone glass beads that clinked lightly against the glass.

“For your pebbles,” Curtis said when Kuro held it up questioningly. “I thought they might have a better home in there than in that spaghetti sauce jar I used.”

Kuro felt his smile grow wider, and ducked his head to hide it in the darkness of the car. He spun the decorated jar slowly in his hands, watching the light of the streetlamps dance across the beads and glittery strips. It wasn’t perfect, the way mass-produced decorations would be, but he could see the effort that had gone into it in the faint unevenness of the stain and occasional crooked glitter strip. Those little imperfections made him love it that much more.

He hugged the jar against himself, sliding down a little to settle in for the ride. Curtis had been a little rough in the beginning, he’d needed some correcting and more than one line drawn in the sand. But his heart was generally in the right place and he genuinely wanted other people to be happy, and even if he wasn’t perfect he was definitely a keeper.


	23. Chapter 23

** _Billions of years ago:_ **

The young Turquoise was having trouble playing with the other cubs in the packs, which wasn’t really unusual. Sentinels weren’t built for running on all fours like Reapers were, they were made for launching into the air and diving. Chasing and catching was very difficult for one who couldn’t dart across the field and easily squeeze under a bramble patch to catch his opponent.

It was just one of the many ways he differed from the rest of his adopted family. Ever since his troupe had been killed by an unexpectedly large swarm of Formless while trying to ferry their fledglings across the border into a reality, the little Turquoise who had been rescued out in the rift by Reapers had stuck out like a sore thumb. He was younger than most of the cubs but still bigger and more unwieldy, unable to start properly learning his element because none of his foster family knew it, and of a totally different mindset that the other youngsters just didn’t understand.

Sentinels, by their nature, were tricksters. It didn’t always mean that they were pranksters or riddlers, but it generally meant their humor was off-key and that they thrived where life didn’t follow a strict routine. The other cubs rarely got his jokes, and even when they did they usually didn’t laugh, and his tendency to take even the worst turn of events in stride with a nihilistic “what are ya gonna do?” made them think there was something wrong with him. But life spent traveling back and forth across the wilds of the rift was brutal in its own way, and his kind had their own emotional defense mechanisms against it.

Now he sat on a rock, alone, watching the smaller, shinier bodies scurry around in the fields laughing. It didn’t really hurt his feelings that they didn’t understand him, or that they tried to avoid him. Eventually he would grow up, and he would go out into the migration routes and find other Sentinels like him. For now, these packs had taken him in as one of their own. They took care of him as best they could and kept him safe. The adults, at least, were far more accepting, especially the Golds who were fare more schooled in the other Quintessi races.

Someday, the Turquoise would repay their kindness. The sun had long since gone out here and the dark sky was empty, the stretch of land these packs lived on slowly deteriorating more each day. They had been cut off from the other edges of the quintessence field, locked away by themselves with no word from any others. Someday, he would travel the edges in the way that only Sentinels could, and he would find the rest. He would pay the ones who were so willing to take care of an outsider by helping the scattered packs reconnect, if there was even time in these fraying worlds for that to happen.

Something moved in the distance, a dark shape on the horizon. The Turquoise sat up straighter, craning his neck to see farther, but whatever it was had stopped. He stared for a long time, until he was beginning to think he had imagined it, when he caught the movement again.

It looked like a series of waves in the tall grass, like a disturbance deep at see sending ripples toward the calm shore. Not just one thing moving but many, spread out in the distance and moving forward.

The smaller, ground-bound Reapers never would have seen it coming. The Turquoise launched himself into the air, gaining height as he circled around to get a closer look.

Formless. Lurching, scraping along, crawling on bellies or just pulling themselves along with claws, a small flood of shapeless masses hungrily closing in on unsuspecting targets. He felt a cold chill of terror run through his body as he remembered what these things had done to his mother, the vivid picture of them digging into her while she tried to fight them off returning to him with a force that almost knocked him out of the sky with fear.

The Turquoise sounded the alarm, his youthful roar more of a warning screech that called not only the attention of the Reaper cubs but of the Formless swarming below. He was in danger and he knew it, as mindless as they usually were they could still temporarily mock his wings for flight if they stared at him long enough to get the vague shape down. He circled away, swooping down low over the now-fleeing cubs to shout out warnings about where the enemy was.

When he was sure they were moving as fast as they could, he turned toward the dens. The adults would be there, unaware of the danger. Formless had never come in so close before, this was unheard of and unprecedented, and it showed in the shock and surprise of the adult Reapers as they looked up to the sky in response to his cries.

When he saw that a group of nearby Bronzes were on the move, with others beginning to mobilize behind them, the Turquoise turned back to the fields. The cubs were moving as a close-packed group now, charging for the stream that separated the playing fields from the dens, making it easier for him to swoop down and take stock. He had spent enough time hanging out on rocks or in trees, watching the others play, to know how many should be here and who.

He counted, then counted again. Again, a third time, and still he came up one short. He drifted down a little lower to get a closer look, trying to figure out who was missing.

An Iron, he deduced. Tiny, younger than the rest, often out with his older sister because he wanted to play with the Big Kids. His little legs and slower speed would not have served him well here.

He thought to turn back and meet the Bronzes, tell them who was missing so some of the adults could keep going once they reached the cubs and try to find the missing. But as he rose a bit higher in the sky he could see that even a handful of fully grown Reapers would be committing suicide to go up against the hungry, oncoming tide. They would need everyone in the packs to even make a dent, to do anything other than stop at the stream and hold the line would be foolhardy even if it meant losing one of the young.

He went higher, doing his best to avoid attention as he scoured the grass and brambles below, searching for what amounted to a needle in a haystack. A single, tiny Iron against the backdrop of nighttime grass, with all the motion and movement nearby to distract from the search…it was a losing battle.

He needed light, and he needed it now.

The Turquoise knew he would only have a few ticks for his search before the situation became too dangerous to continue so he soared out farther, out just to the edge of the approaching Formless, to end of the field where they’d been playing. If the little Iron was still out here, he would be somewhere around here…if he was still okay.

His natural element was Flood, the explosive power of a roaring body of flowing water. But without a teacher who specialized, and only the Golds to learn from, he had been taught what little they knew from all of the Sentinel elements. He was nowhere near a master of his own, but knew the basics of all.

So he knew electromagnetism was tricky, that the Aurora element of the Opals was a moody one. It worked differently depending on where one was and it would be made more difficult by the fact that it wasn’t his inborn alignment. What happened out in a reality wouldn’t be what happened in the rift, and it certainly wouldn’t be what would happen here in the Borderlands. Out in the realities, if an Opal created a field it would react with particles from stars, forming rainbow auroras over the magnetic poles of planets. That gently ebbing and flowing ocean of light would move slowly and last for hours.

Here, it would explode in flashes and bursts, hours of light condensed into ticks. It would be a beacon, drawing the attention of everything for miles, and the residue on his scales would leave him glowing in the darkness and easier to target. But he had no other way, and time was running short.

He took himself up higher, as high as he dared to go, and then wrapped himself into a tight cocoon with his wings to block out everything around him. The only distraction now was the feeling of freefall, and for a creature who regularly swooped and dove, that was nothing. It gave him the precious few ticks he needed to concentrate, gathering up the energy necessary before snapping his wings open to catch himself, releasing it across the sky in a web of charged power.

As expected, the sky exploded. The rainbow wave of light flowed outward, like fire running across a flammable liquid, and for a few short heartbeats the world was awash in the bright light of day.

And there, against the unusually vibrant green of the grass below, he spotted the small, inky black ball of fur that was curled in on himself in terror. To the Turquoise’ horror, the most forward breach of Formless was lurching directly toward him, having already spotted the cub even before the sky had been set alight.

The Turquoise looked back at the Reapers, all stopped at the stream and herding the last of the cubs across, dancing in place with the desire to come to the little one’s aid but knowing that to do so would mean disaster. They stayed back reluctantly, holding the line where the terrain favored them, angry and panicked and in visible distress.

Looking out at the Formless was no better. In the dying light he could see that it was far worse than he’d imagined, the swarm seemed to go on for miles. He didn’t know what had brought them here but there were too many to be turned back with force.

He couldn’t breathe, he felt like his heart had stopped beating. He was back in the rift, surrounded by the sounds of violent fighting and crying for his parents. No help had come for them in time, and no help was coming for the cub below.

_No. No, no, no._

The Turquoise knew what was going to happen when the razor sharp claws reached the little Iron. He had seen it with his own eyes before, and he couldn’t bear to see it again.

_No no no no no!_

He wrapped his wings tight and dove, focusing all of his attention on the single Formless closest to the cub. He concentrated completely on his target, his whole body going numb with fear even as his wings snapped open at the last minute, feeling his full weight hit the monstrosity below and his talons dig into the amorphous surface.

He tore and sliced and bit, throwing every sharp edge he had at his enemy and adding to the onslaught with the beating of his heavy wings. Something heavy glanced off his scales, his armored hide mostly protecting his flesh but still feeling the sharp sting of something managing to do a bit of damage. He kept attacking with every bit of fury he had pent up over the decaphoebs, his brain momentarily going blank as instinct took over where terror tried to paralyze.

Something hit him again, this time managing to dislodge him and effectively knocking a bit of sense back into him. He crept backward, his wings raised to make himself bigger, hissing wildly at anything that moved nearby. The Formless he had surprised quickly began to regroup and approach, and he knew he didn’t stand a chance.

He darted forward and grabbed the little Iron, launching himself back up off the ground. But this time the sky felt heavier as it was filled with the flapping sound of dark wings, his softly glowing form easier to see and copy now that he’d called their gaze to it. The way back was not easy, and even as he came in for an approach of the stream he knew that he couldn’t go across it.

Formless were dangerous in large groups, but they also weren’t the smartest. He had their attention now, he was a brighter and more attractive target than the gathered Reaper packs that were still so far unnoticed.

If he could just turn the front of the line in a different direction, the rest would likely follow.

Or so he hoped. He honestly didn’t know, and in the spur of the moment there wasn’t really time to mull it over. He hit the ground in a skid, rolling several times and throwing the little Iron toward the stream. He saw a Silver sprint forward but didn’t stay to find out if she reached him, throwing himself back up into the sky.

The air was practically solid with all of the things trying to surround him, he felt them scratching and clawing at his scales and felt the burning of gashes and scrapes on the unprotected membranes of his wings. Pure fear powered his flight as he fought himself up higher, feeling the jaws of something close around the joint of his left wing as he broke out into open sky.

It made him scream from the pain. He lashed out, sending out another wave of explosive light, and several somethings nearby let out ungodly trills of anger and hurt as they took the brunt of the defense.

He thought he heard one of the Golds calling him, telling him to come back to the dubious safety of the dens. But they didn’t know just how many of these things they were up against, they had no idea just how quickly their defenses would be overrun. He did not turn back, instead he kept going, flying as fast as his wounded wing would carry him.

Over the fields and past the hills, to the ruins of the old caldera that was crumbling out into the empty space of nothing. He hit the edge of the Borderlands and kept on going, feeling the world around him change as the everlasting night of his current home became the blinding field of light that was the rift.

Somewhere, if he went far enough, was a reality. A physical universe where the Formless couldn’t survive, though he was a bit fuzzy on the details of that. All he knew was that his only option was to keep going forward, because stopping or even slowing down meant death.

It wasn’t easy. He was handicapped by his injured wing, every flap tearing it further and causing more agonizing damage. His young scales had protected him as much as they could, but he could feel that in many places they were cracked and shredded from the onslaught. The blows that landed on him, the teeth and claws that dug in, they became more and more frequent as his strength began to fade.

It was just as he felt that it was over, that he couldn’t go any farther, that he felt the change. The staticky build-up that told him he was beginning to press against a membrane, a wall that separated a physical universe from the rift. It would stop another Quintessi but to him it was just a pressure, one that quickly grew and required more and more strength for him to keep going.

He poured everything he had into a final lunge and felt a charge run through the membrane around him. The resistance disappeared and he flew forward, the silence of the rift replaced by the tumultuous roar of an exploding volcano.

The Turquoise hit solid ground and rolled, slamming into multiple rocks and ledges with pained grunts before he came to a stop. He could feel the ground shaking under him and smell the smoke and sulfur on the air, could see the warring particles high up in the sky. A recently formed planet, a newborn rocky world, swirling with the violent geological processes that would shape it into something where life could eventually thrive.

There was a noise nearby, but he couldn’t even raise his head. All he could do was tilt it slightly, to see the dark black shape slithering across the trembling earth toward him. Mindless, hungry, completely ignorant of the place it had followed him to.

The Turquoise watched as its controlled slither became shaky stumbling. The semi-steady shape began to deteriorate, shifting from one thing to another, unable to hold any recognizable form. It let out a bone chilling noise as it twitched and shuddered, thrashing around only a few feet from where he lay until it was nothing more than a puddle of strange, black ooze.

He let his focus on it waver, his eyes instead picking out the things lying in front of him. Appendages of some sort…weak, brown, soft skin instead of protective scales. The fingernails of the five digits on each hand were cracked and broken, and the skin of the arms was torn and lacerated. He only identified them as belonging to himself when he saw the light blue blood.

So this was the shape his mother tried to describe when telling him of the dangers of realities. The compact form a Sentinel reverted to when their strength was running low, a survival mechanism to create smaller body that took less energy to survive. Two weak arms, two pathetically injured legs, no wings or scales or claws. It had a nose to smell with, and lungs to draw air through it for that purpose, but fortunately had no actual need for breath to survive here. The compounds currently in the atmosphere here would kill him immediately if that were the case, just like the shaking of the ground and the nearby erupting volcano would probably do to him shortly. This planet would cradle life some day, but right now it wasn’t very partial to it.

But dying like this, at least, wasn’t so bad. This was familiar, the violent upheaval of a developing planet that would strike horror into mortals was at the heart of the Sentinels’ elements. It was far better than being torn into little pieces, and he found comfort in the shaking under his cheek as he closed his eyes and let his consciousness fade away.

* * * * *

_Was it worth it?_

The words didn’t have any tone to them to indicate how their source felt about the question. Sarcasm, curiosity, disappointment, the query came in the form of more of an intrusive thought that anything he actually heard. He didn’t try to open his eyes, or make any attempt to wake up.

“Was what worth what?”

_You were lucky enough to survive when the rest of your troupe didn’t. Was it worth walking right into exactly what you barely managed to escape? Was one Reaper cub worth dying for? One little tiny creature, too weak to contribute anything, to young to really be missed all that much. Was it really an equal exchange?_

“You can’t calculate the value of a life, it’s infinite and immeasurable. You don’t just add up different lives and decide if one pile is worth more than another.”

_That’s not really an answer to the question._

“It’s a stupid question based on a fake premise.”

_Okay, smart guy. Then what’s the right question?_

“Am I okay with dying like this? Do I regret taking a calculated risk when I don’t even know how to spell “math?”

_So what’s the answer to that question?_

“Oh, yeah. I’m fine, it could’ve ended worse. It could’ve been so, so much worse. But it’s not, so I’m okay with it. No regrets except that my back probably shouldn’t be bent the way it is. It’s…slightly uncomfortable.”

_…_

“Are you done, then? Can I die in peace now?”

_Would you do it again?_

“If I had lived I still would never have bothered to learn math. So, probably.”

_Even though you’re terrified right now? You wouldn’t let that stop you from making a hard decision later?_

“No sense and no feeling, that’s what my foster mother likes to say about me. Nothing in this skull but that song chorus long-ear was singing last movement.”

_I do have a soft spot for the empty-headed and instinct-driven. Too much thinking can stop necessary action. I think you can be of use._

“Great! I’m glad I could be of service. Good-night weird, disembodied voice.”

_Wait, I’m not done with yo…oh, whatever. Yeah, fine._

* * * * *

He was woken by a sudden change in the sound of the world around him. The earth was still trembling and the air still thick with the heat of the rupturing crust, but it was as if the cracks in the nearby ground had shifted enough that the material being released followed suit, escaping with at a velocity that produced a very particular noise.

Lower, deeper, more soothing and almost ordered. Like a very deliberate song, as if the planet itself was calling someone.

When he heard another song in reply a few minutes later, that was when he opened his eyes and turned them toward the sky. Up above, high in the atmosphere, it looked like a flood of cloud cover moving in. But dancing along the rolling river of plasma were shapes that couldn’t be mistaken, masses of water from torrential rain and fire from exploding meteors, the whipping wind of the oncoming storm and the gentle glow of auroras. Pure energy, delighting in and feeding on the titanic reactions of a volatile, chaotic planet.

The group of adult Sentinels followed the sound being made by the eruption, but the Turquoise was unable to add his own call to the mix. So close yet so far, he closed his eyes again, resigned to being passed over and honestly not thinking clearly in his battered and exhausted state.

He barely felt it as the ground shifted around him, disrupted by talons digging into the dirt so as not to further cut a fragile, damaged little body. He was only vaguely aware of moving, of the distant song of another Turquoise nearby and the response of the Carnelian carrying him. He drifted off completely, unaware of anything as he did but the calming songs of other Sentinels.

* * * * * * * * * *

** _Current day:_ **

The _shikashikashika_ of the plastic squirt bottle caught Onyx by surprise, as did the unexpected rain of water on his face. He sputtered and slapped at it as he snapped awake, nearly falling off the low cement ledge he was laying on. Grumbling incoherently, he pushed himself up on one elbow to squint up at the two young men standing over him.

“What?” He asked crankily.

Keith, after a brief pause, spritzed him with the spray bottle again.

“I’m awake!” Onyx complained, making an unsteady swipe for the bottle and missing.

“Sorry,” Keith said unapologetically, shrugging when Lance raised an eyebrow at him.

There were a handful of cadets standing around, watching the scene with interest. Onyx had been told that some of the children who schooled here remained in the dorms over holidays because they didn’t yet have rebuilt homes to return to, which explained why there were enough to form a crowd.

“Leave the poor guy alone!” One younger girl huffed at Keith. “It’s freezing out, all he wants is a place to sleep! There’s a Code Blue, you should be helping him find one of the shelters!”

As she reprimanded Keith and Lance, she held a dollar out in front of Onyx. He was perplexed and mystified and overall just not awake enough for any of this yet.

“He’s not homeless!” Lance exclaimed, taking the dollar out of her hand and shoving it into the pocket of her jacket. “He’s just weird! He’s with us.”

“Is it cold out?” Onyx asked groggily, sitting all the way up. He didn’t have the same temperature intolerances as these little things, given just how frigid the universe outside of star systems got he had found the evening positively balmy.

“No, really, he’s not homeless,” Keith was telling the girl. “We’re not harassing him, we’re just collecting him before one of the officers calls the police.”

To punctuate his point, he spritzed Onyx with the spray bottle again.

“I’m going to make you eat that,” Onyx warned. Lance quickly relieved Keith of the spray bottle before he could dare him with another spritz.

The sun was up and people were around, so clearly it was time to start the day. Onyx got to his feet, cracking his neck and stretching as the crowd of onlooking kids began to dissipate.

“Don’t you have a room to go to?” Lance asked him skeptically. “You’re staying with Curtis now, right? Why are you sleeping on the quad?”

“What’s a quad?” Onyx asked indifferently, following them as they started to lead him down the paved path. “I was sleeping on that nice, firm ledge over there.”

“Yeah, that ledge is in the quad, which is this big rectangle space right in front of the main building on Garrison base property.”

“Who says it’s Garrison property?”

Lance looked up at him like he’d grown another head.

“Um, the many, many signs and warnings that you’re on a military base,” he pointed out.

“You can’t really own a place,” Onyx stretched again. “You can only occupy it. It’s only “yours” as long as somebody strong enough doesn’t come along and kick you off…clearly your fun little signs didn’t dissuade the Galra, they hung around until they were booted out. Your Garrison will eventually turn to dust and be forgotten, and future generations will walk through here with no regard for what was here. Just like current humans walk on the bones of the ones that came before. All places in existence are open to everyone, ownership is just a quaint little concept made up by less-developed life forms who for some reason believe that to have more than is necessary to be comfortable at any given time, even if others do without, is a God-given right. That concept of possession, by the way, is one of the first steps toward desecration and will ultimately lead to a tipping point in resource distribution that will result in the species’ self-annihilation.”

It wasn’t really meant to be dark or foreboding, Onyx was just stating a fact. One he thought was pretty common knowledge no less. After you saw a couple species murder their own planet and slowly kill their own kind just for the chance to hoard more than anyone else for a little bit longer, you stopped even feeling bad for those species. They just became a study in futility, all you could really do was check in now and then until they all died out and the planet died, then you just swept its quintessence pool over to a newly born planet and waited to see if they’d learned their lesson this time around.

But maybe that was a little bit much for two young humans early in the morning. Keith and Lance were both looking at him with something only a little less severe than horror on their faces.

“…I can sleep wherever I want,” he clarified, reaching over to take a to-go cup of hot coffee right out of the tray of four in the hands of a passing Lieutenant. He did it right in front of her face but of course she didn’t notice, her attention slid right off of him just like it was supposed to. “And I like sleeping on rock, feels nice on the back.”

“Yeah, okay,” Keith answered, still looking a little bit frazzled. “Look, there’s a meeting? Everyone’s been looking for you for an hour.”

They started walking again, heading into the building in front of them, and Onyx followed. There were more people here, busily going about their day, but even though the tide of people parted to let him through as everyone instinctively avoided hitting him, nobody noticed him enough to question whether he belonged.

“Did he just steal that lady’s coffee?” He heard Lance ask Keith.

“He does that,” Keith murmured back. “Check your pockets when we leave, make sure you have your wallet.”

The two led Onyx through halls that he chose not to tell them he already found familiar. He had spent the little over a week here on Earth, poking his nose into all the places he knew he wasn’t supposed to, walking these halls at night knowing that their video equipment would never register he was here. He rifled through files, paged through textbooks, and played with admittedly very cool weapons that nobody was supposed to touch.

Mostly, he coddled the three young Sentinels nearby and helped them torment the four Guardians settled over in that big ship hangar. It was all in good fun, and that red one just kept losing her ever-loving shit no matter how much the blue one tried to calm her down. She’d even almost got him a couple times.

Onyx felt the White nearby as they got closer to where he knew the meeting rooms were, and assumed those four Reapers would probably be close behind. That was good, there was what appeared to be a very important holiday season going on across this whole planet and he had been waiting for it to end before he’d dragged the Golds back into business. This might solve that problem.

He was right, the Golds were there when he followed Keith and Lance into the large meeting room. They were sitting by the White.

Names, they had names now. It was very rude of him to keep referring to them by who they had once been and not by who they were now. Regardless of whether they still held a color title, they were called Shiro and Curtis and Kuro. The Silver was Lotor, the Bronze was Nikolaev. Somewhere out there the Bronze had a sister, she probably had a name now, too.

“Good morning,” Onyx greeted everyone pleasantly as he came in, taking stock of who was here. “To everyone except the brat who woke me up with a water bottle. Mediocre morning to him, at best.”

“Still better than half my other mornings so far, I’ll take it,” Keith answered.

He and Lance physically climbed over one leg of the U-shaped table instead of walking around it, going to join Adam, Hunk, and Pidge where they were sitting at the other side. Lotor was here, along with the three women the fledglings were so fond of. Allura, Romelle, and Veronica sat at the back of the U. Next to Allura was the red-haired Altean man, the one with the wonderful moustache.

And that was it. For a room of this size, the attendees were surprisingly limited. Aside from the moustache, it appeared only Quintessi and those directly linked to them had been invited.

“I hope everyone had a good Christmas and a nice few days since,” Shiro greeted everybody, getting up to close the door behind Onyx as Onyx moved to take the empty seat beside Nikolaev. “Technically it’s still a base holiday, so we’re only here for a meeting and then everyone can go. This is important though, so anything you see today is confidential. I know we use that term pretty loosely, but absolutely nobody outside this room is allowed to hear about anything we’re about to go over. Got it?”

A soft chorus of “yes” came from those in the room, and Shiro sat back down. He gave a nod to Pidge, who got out of her chair to come around and sit on the edge of the table instead.

“Last week, I spent a couple days with Matt writing a sneak attack virus that could be used to retrieve the information that was saved to the Green Lion’s databanks,” she announced. “Everything I recorded through my armor out in the rift was saved to her physical memory, and when she went dead I couldn’t access it. With…Black hanging out in her I couldn’t just charge her and boot her up, we had to sort of sneak up on him and run off with the downloaded information.”

“How did you load the virus?” Hunk asked. “There was no power left on that ship.”

“Green and I went up in the Black Lion,” Pidge answered. “She distracted him while I used one of the new Infinite Zero crystals from Colony Two to throw the Green Lion just enough charge to upload the virus over the comm links. Then I downloaded everything that was in there and remotely activated the power discharge to kill the ship again.”

Curtis raised his hand, politely calling her attention without interrupting.

“Those crystals,” he nodded toward the one she was holding up when she looked at him. “They’re called Nocturline crystals. We only just discovered them, barely a couple years ago. They occur naturally in some places where the rift meets the Beyond, but we’re not sure how they form. One theory is that the high pressure of the quintessence field pressed against the border membrane couples with friction created when some of that quintessence flows out through the holes.”

“Sounds right,” Shiro added. “These were created during the bonding, when all the extra mass of a Guardian was instantaneously condensed. That’s a high pressure, high friction, high quintessence equation itself right there. So was the flash of infinite mass crushing a quintessence-run ship when we destroyed the Castle of Lions.”

“Well if that’s the case, someone needs to check the back of the emergency room in the main Atlas medical bay,” Curtis suggested. “I know it’s still under quarantine for a few more days just to make sure there’s absolutely no overexposure to the staff, but I wasn’t really thinking to check for Nocturline crystals when I woke up.”

“Apparently all you were thinking about when you woke up was food,” Lotor replied.

“_And_ Ryou,” Curtis defended, careful not to look at Kuro. “I told you, I hadn’t eaten a real meal in days!”

“Wait, if bonding sets up the right circumstances to create these crystals, then Honerva’s had Nocturline crystals in her possession for the last ten thousand years,” Kuro pointed out. “They would’ve been created when she force-bonded Lotor to keep him alive. And I was caught again while I was sleeping off the change, I woke up back in my cell after bonding. She would have found crystals then, too.”

“Then why hasn’t she been using them?” Allura asked, catching the crystal that Pidge tossed to her. “These are very powerful. If about the same amount are created with every bonding, between Kuro and Lotor she would have had enough to power entire Galra armadas.”

“But she isn’t,” Keith mused. “We’ve never found any signs anywhere that the Galra have been using these. They never would have even needed that Komar technology if they had these crystals, there would be no reason to pull quintessence from planets.”

“There was nothing in any of her notes or labs that indicated she had ever even experimented with these,” Lotor added. “So we know she had them, but nobody on her side has ever used them. Or even knew they existed, as far as we can see.”

Onyx heard a faint scratching sound and looked over at Nikolaev. He was digging his nails into the table in front of him and practically glaring at Lotor, like he was trying to force a conclusion into the other man’s brain by sheer willpower alone.

“Sounds like she destroyed them.” The response that made Nikolaev let out a quiet sigh of relief didn’t come from Lotor, but from Romelle. “She processes the quintessence she gets out of planets, but there’s probably no easy way to filter what the crystals give off. Maybe there’s something about pure quintessence that doesn’t work with her technology.”

Nikolaev let his head fall forward onto the table with a soft ‘thunk’. Onyx nudged him lightly with his elbow.

“Are you all right?” He whispered.

“No,” Nikolaev whimpered.

“Coffee?”

Nikolaev raised his head to look dully at the half-empty cup Onyx was offering. His expression said the thought of sharing was unappetizing.

“Thanks,” he said around a mild grimace. “But I’ll pass.”

“We can take another look at the cruisers, but that argument doesn’t really hold water,” Allura was saying. “Griffin gave one of these crystals to the engineering crew when they took over that ship on Colony Two, they were able to work it into the existing fuel processor with only a little bit of tampering. Even the Altean technology they were working with took almost eight vargas for us to convert, the Galra tech took to the crystal instantly by comparison.”

“Honerva had the crystal Lance stole in a special glass case,” Adam piped up. “You’d think that with something powerful like that would be carried on her at all times, but it gave anyone who tried to touch it a pretty bad zap until I grabbed it.”

“Um,” Shiro looked embarrassed, a faint wash of pink starting to color his neck. “That…might have been because the White Lion was being very picky about who could touch it. But you’re still right, Honerva never made any attempt to go near it once she had Lance put it in the case.”

“So maybe they hurt her somehow,” Lance supposed. “She didn’t care what I actually did to the Atlas, but she specifically wanted that crystal removed. Maybe she was planning on destroying it along with Lotor when we ran off with both.”

Nikolaev made a little noise. Onyx took a sip from his cup, watching with interest as his fists clenched and he ground his teeth. Watching him twitch and squeak like he was afflicted with some kind of bizarre spiritual possession was exhausting, Onyx was on a roller coaster of emotions and they weren’t even his emotions. Even Kuro noticed now, looking over at the man between them with a little frown.

“We’ve got plenty of crystals to study and find out,” Pidge pointed out, moving to call attention back to the reason for their meeting. “And now that we know they occur naturally in the quintessence field, Onyx can probably take a couple to Kuro’s and Curtis’ packs and see if they can test them as some kind of repellant against Formless over in their native area. For now, there’s something a little more important.”

She leaned over and plugged a small chip in her hands into one of the consoles on the table, loading its contents up onto the main screen in the room.

“There’s a lot of stuff here I’m not going to go through, it’s all on file for when we need it,” she said. “Particle tracking and energy readouts, all the scans Adam and I were doing on the physics of the rift in the different parts where we were. Great for the study of quintessence field physics, not very useful to us right now. What Keith and I really wanted everyone to see is this.”

She moved on to the video files, bringing them up to a still shot of an old, overgrown path. The greenery was wild and alien, like nothing that grew out in the realities. Right in the middle of the shot was the stone arch.

“This is was in the quintessence field?” Curtis asked, sitting up straighter.

“No, it was past it,” Keith answered. “Like we told you, we started in a little false pocket that was at the edge of the rift. As we walked along this path, I’m pretty sure we left the quintessence field entirely. I think this is out past the boundary of existence.”

“It gets better,” Pidge warned, playing the video.

Onyx watched the scene he had already lived, as Pidge moved her camera around to take in details of the environment nobody else was paying attention to. Their argument was caught on audio, and then the group moved across the bridge. Pidge got a pretty good shot of the swirling fog below, but before she could get a good view of the city she had been pulled down to the ground.

There was nothing in view except grass for a few minutes, but again the arguments were caught on audio. Then came the point when Pidge had army-crawled forward to document what they’d found, and after some shuffling the city came up on screen. She paused it there.

Curtis stood up so fast his chair fell over. Kuro and Shiro rose a little more slowly, all of them staring at the picture on the screen with disbelief. The others in the room were caught by surprise as well, but since they didn’t yet understand the physics or the absolute impossibility of what they were seeing yet the effect wasn’t quite as great.

“You found Silador.”

Onyx looked back over at Nikolaev, at the same time that Kuro whipped around to face him. Nikolaev was staring at the screen as if he’d seen a ghost, his usually pale pallor almost white as the blood drained out of his face. Curtis lightly nudged Kuro back out of his way so he could look at the younger officer.

“Hold on, you knew this place existed?” Curtis demanded. He gestured wildly at the paused video. “This is a goddamn city that shouldn’t _be_, in a place where it _can’t_ be, and you knew about it?”

“Yes,” Nikolaev didn’t even appear to hear the tone in Curtis’ voice. His eyes were glued to the screen, and Onyx was willing to bet somebody else’s money that if they waited long enough he might start to hyperventilate. “I used to live there.”

“You used to…nobody lives there!” Curtis exclaimed. “Look at it! It’s ruins!”

“It’s not really ruins, it’s just in disrepair,” Onyx corrected. “But Curtis is right, nobody’s lived there for a really, really long time. There aren’t any real elements to weather things out there except the traces that trickle in from the nearby wild tide’s flow every now and then, I’d say the last time somebody lived there was generations before even I was born.”

“Wait,” Shiro put up a hand before Curtis continued having his stroke, zeroing in on Nikolaev. He did not look pleased. “You only told us you’ve lived through a couple of universe cycles. How old are you, Lieutenant? And stop giving me runaround answers, tell the truth for once.”

“I always tell you the truth,” Nikolaev answered, finally looking away from the screen. He glanced over at Lotor, then Onyx, then looked at the other three Quintessi next to him. “You just always ask for a vague truth and then get mad when I don’t give you a specific one. I was born before the quintessence field was created.”

“You’re an Original,” Onyx raised his eyebrows and took another sip of his coffee. Wasn’t that just delightfully curious? Life was just full of chaotic little surprises recently. “I knew they’d started to move, I never thought I’d meet one. I thought you’d be a little less spastic.”

“You…” Curtis reached the limit of his body’s stress accommodation after that single word, and at that point lost all ability to say any further ones. Kuro reached up to lightly squeeze his arm.

“Babe, we’ve talked about your blood pressure.”

Curtis took a deep breath and abruptly sat down. Not a man who liked surprises, apparently, that was a shame. He was going to have several heart attacks before the war was over at this rate. Kuro, clearly the more patient of the pair—or at least the less sensitive to unpredictability—kept him seated with the hand still on his arm and turned his attention to Nikolaev.

“I think what Curtis is trying to say is that it’s a little bit frustrating to have gone through everything we did, only to find out that you’re old enough to potentially have answers we need and are hiding them.”

“I’m not hiding anything!” Nikolaev answered, becoming frustrated himself. “I’m telling you everything I’m capable of telling you, as soon as I’m capable of telling it. That city is Silador, it’s the home of the Three Siblings, and it isn’t meant to be talked about! Nobody tells you about it, it lets you find it when you’re ready, and once you do you’re bound against speaking of it to anyone who doesn’t already know.”

“Oh, it’s cursed!” Onyx realized with a flash of excitement. “That’s fun. I knew cursed things were out there, but I’ve never managed to find one before.”

“That’s _fun_?” Lotor repeated, giving him an astonished look.

“So what you’re telling me is that you lived in this city, but you couldn’t say anything about it because the three gods put some kind of binding on all of its residents?” Shiro asked skeptically. “What’s the point?”

“Like I said, Silador is—or was—the home of the Three,” Nikolaev answered. “It’s a utopia, it’s where you end up after you’ve worked hard enough in life to become enlightened. Not just anyone can live there, you have to prove you’ve grown and are worthy of joining the higher ranks. That’s where you go when you’ve achieved everything you can in the normal course of life and you’re now ready to learn directly from the Three Siblings.”

“So it’s like the immortals’ version of the afterlife,” Lance mused, kicking his feet up on the table. “The place of eternal peace where you go after you’ve suffered through the lessons of life or whatever.”

“How does a Bronze end up enlightened enough to live in a city of the gods?” Veronica wondered. “Don’t you guys have different levels you have to go through first? Aren’t you supposed to be a Gold or something?”

“No,” Nikolaev answered, looking almost insulted. “The requirement for Silador is to be bonded, that’s the first step. Ascension was always meant to come after you’ve already proven you weren’t after power for power’s sake, by voluntarily giving it up to bond with your other half.”

Everyone immediately looked at Kuro, who quickly became defensive.

“Hey, it’s not like I _knew_ that! I wasn’t looking for this!”

“Sounds like that’s the point,” Shiro answered. “So why are you able to talk about all of this now? Why are you only able to spill the details today?”

“Because now you already know where Silador is,” Nikolaev answered. “I never knew that Keith and Pidge had been there, if I did I would have been able to talk to them sooner. They were able to tell you about it because they’ve only been to the edge of the city, they were never far enough in for the binding to affect them and stop them from talking. Now that everyone in the room has seen it, I’m not barred from speaking about it.”

“Is it the same with that little detail about Ascension?” Onyx asked. “That’s definitely not common knowledge.”

“I can tell you about Ascension because you’ve already learned from Kuro that it can happen after bonding. It covers everything that has to do with being granted admission to the city,” Nikolaev confirmed. “And it covers things about the city itself. There are some other things I want to tell you, but they’re just not coming out. Silador was meant to be a place of learning, everyone needs to develop and grow on their own and discover truths about the universe in their own time. The gag rule was meant to stop people from learning things before they’re ready to know them, the Three never meant for it to stop any of us from enlisting help in a situation like this. This is…unprecedented.”

“If you fight against the binding, what happens?” Curtis asked. “You’re just one, maybe with enough of us we can break it?”

“It has a pretty nasty backlash,” Nikolaev admitted. “My sister and I both tried it, but we couldn’t break it. It basically kills you and dumps you back into a universe to be born again and re-learn that you’re not supposed to rush and that patience is always necessary…we were willing to risk it, because we’d already been through a couple universes by then anyway. But when it backfires and tosses you out into the ether, it also blocks your memory of Silador completely so you can’t try to return until you’ve earned it again. It took me two universes to remember who I was, my sister’s out there just thinking she’s a regular mortal with no memory of what she really is. And there are probably other bonded who survived Silador’s fall who are in the same boat, potential allies who just don’t have any clue how much power they really have.”

“How did Silador fall?” Hunk asked tentatively, looking from the screen to Nikolaev. “This…this is some pretty nasty stuff, there’s no way anything good happened here.”

Nikolaev opened his mouth, then closed it again. He made a noise of frustration and shook his head.

“It’s got something to do with the city itself then, and not an outside force,” Onyx deduced. “Question…if you can only talk about something after we’re all aware of it, are you able to tell us when we guess something correctly?”

“Maybe,” Nikolaev shrugged. “If you really think your guess is true and you’re not just spitting things out at random.”

“Okay, let’s try.”

Onyx rubbed his hands together as he rose, following Pidge, Adam, and Hunk over to take a closer look at the screen. He pointed to one of the spires.

“This is the city of the three gods, that means one of these spires belongs to each of them.”

“Yes,” Nikolaev nodded. So far so good.

“These elevated pathways, they’re arterial roads,” Onyx continued, running a finger along the high, bridge-like structure that ran around the edge of the city connecting the three spires. Each of the elevated roads was bisected in the middle by another stretch, leading from the outer road to the large crystal structure in the middle. “The outside road connects the spires for easy access without having to go through the city. Each god also has residents in their spire? Staff, students, friends? These are palaces.”

“Yes.”

“These three spoke roads that go from the rim to the center, they’re supported by wide arches so residents can cross under easily, but they’re still large, wide features that effectively break the city into three. Bonded Guardians, Reapers, and Sentinels live in the section of the city under their own patron god?”

“Yes.”

“This crystal takes up a pretty prominent place in the middle of the city,” Hunk observed. “So it’s obviously super important.”

“Yes,” Nikolaev agreed again, looking hopeful as they progressed.

“But it’s got this wall around the base to keep the people away from it, so it’s also dangerous,” Hunk noted. “

“Yes, extremely.”

“It’s a power source!” Hunk concluded. “It’s generating the city’s power from a central hub.”

Nikolaev winced. No dice.

“I think it’s probably something with religious significance,” Pidge guessed. “It’s right there in the middle for everyone to always see, and Onyx said nobody knows the gods’ origins. It’s probably something they brought with them when they came into our bundle of universes.”

Nikolaev sighed and let his head fall forward on the table again. Onyx turned back to the image, considering the crystal.

“It’s a prison!” Lance suddenly exclaimed. Nikolaev’s head shot up and he pointed at him. “It’s glowing like that because it works the same way Allura’s holding cylinders did to trap those Formless we took out of the Altean kids!”

“Yes!”

“The crystal itself isn’t dangerous to the residents, just like that Gold was only hanging around because he wanted to and not because he was trapped!” Lance continued, rising to his feet. Nikolaev surged out of his chair as well.

“Yes!”

“The only access to it is from those elevated roads because you have to go through the spires to get to it!”

“Correct!”

“Because some people in the city do know where the gods came from and they do know what’s in the crystal, but you have to be a certain level before you’re allowed to know what it is or able to help contain it! Just like you had to be on a certain level before the White Lion would let you into Oriande!”

“Exactly!”

Everyone looked expectantly at Lance as he opened his mouth again, but then his excited grin faded and he dropped back down into his chair.

“Yeah, sorry, that’s all I got.”

“That’s still a lot more than we had a minute ago,” Keith reasoned, kicking him lightly under the table. “Nice job.”

“So what’s being imprisoned, then?” Onyx wondered.

“I can’t say,” Nikolaev said dully. “And you’re never going to guess this one, it’s just too far ahead of where you are. All I can say, and all you really need to know, is that it’s something very, very bad.”

“Something very bad that’s not in there anymore,” Adam finally spoke up. He was still in his seat, resting his chin on one hand as he looked at the image. “It may still be glowing, but that crystal is cracked.”

“Where?” Onyx wondered, taking a step back from the larger screen. Adam leaned forward to point to a spot on the far edge of the crystal, only barely visible from the angle of Pidge’s video. The scene out there was already dark, but he was right. There was a jagged spot there where there was no glow.

“No, it’s not there anymore,” Nikolaev agreed, looking vaguely hopeful again.

“It got out,” Adam mused. “It produced these Formless and the residents were caught unaware. They escaped out into the realities as the city fell and have either been in hiding or have tried to fight off the binding to enlist help and had their memories unintentionally wiped. Then whatever was in there left Silador.”

“It followed the bonded into the realities,” Shiro said suddenly, sitting up from where he had been leaning back in his chair. “The White Lion sensed it and went to investigate. I found it before it was strong but I didn’t know what it was, I just kept finding a species that could do alchemy and teaching them to throw it out of their universe. I followed it several times until it wised up.”

“It finally fought back and wiped out the Alteans you were training,” Curtis mused, having finally calmed down enough to contribute. “It stranded you in the white hole you were in by cutting you off from a supply of students, until Allura and Lotor arrived.”

“And while you were trapped there, it manipulated a mortal into taking it into the quintessence field through the rift hole,” Kuro continued. “Where it kidnapped a Silver to keep a child alive, in return for its host giving up all control. Once that happened, with no surviving Alteans coming after it, it was free to go about its business for ten thousand years.”

“Now it’s building a giant mech to house itself as a physical body, so it can ditch that host and basically be unstoppable,” Hunk gulped. “And it’s really, really pissed off at us.”

They all turned to Nikolaev, who looked neither happy nor celebratory that they’d followed the threads to a logical conclusion. Instead he looked sad, maybe a little bit lost.

“Yes,” he whispered, dropping his eyes down to the table and absently scratching at an old pen mark there.

Everyone went silent, all turning their gazes back to the city on the screen, contemplating this new and admittedly terrible information.

But as terrible as it was, they had some answers, Onyx reasoned. Maybe they still didn’t know what really controlled Honerva, but they knew where it came from. They knew there were allies out there, powerful ones, waiting and hoping for someone to find the truth and break their enforced silence. And they knew where there was a prison that could hold this thing they were up against, if they could retake Silador and somehow repair that crystal.

“I guess the real question is, how do you retake the city?” Onyx asked out loud, still looking at the screen. “There’s no way that crystal was the only defense. If the crystal itself is the prison, that city was built around it to keep it secure. There have got to be more things we can use to clear this place out.”

“Of course there are,” Nikolaev answered. “The defenses are in the spires. Each one ran on a something that to most would just look like a gemstone, they were a form of storage chip that carried the defense programs. The gods stayed in the city while the people evacuated, to keep the defenses up until the last possible minute. Then they sent the stones away with a trusted servant to make sure the programs couldn’t be erased or corrupted and the defenses permanently disabled.”

“Oh, lovely,” Allura said flatly. “So all we’ve got to do is track down one immortal across millions of massive universes, and hope he’s still got these stones so we can try to sneak past thousands of nightmare creatures on the off chance we can get the power back on. Sounds like quite the easy afternoon.”

“It gets worse,” Keith told her. “Pidge, can you show the rest of the video? And I have to warn everyone, it’s pretty disturbing.”

Onyx moved away from the screen, going to sit on the table by his chair instead of in it as Pidge continued the video. He had to grit his teeth and force his breathing to remain even, as the swarming wave of Formless moving toward Keith brought back terrible and frightening memories.

Pidge had caught Black’s deterioration on video, and as it played he could hear people in the room gasping. A glance at Keith himself revealed that the young man was looking down at the table, studiously avoiding exposing himself again.

After it ended, Pidge removed the chip rather than risk being asked to play any of the video again. Nobody needed to see more, not now that they’d been fully exposed to the real horror that they were facing. In the silence that followed, Keith cleared his throat and looked around.

“I’ve seen this before,” he admitted. “That sort of…intermediate stage, while Black was still kind of himself but also changing. I saw it here.”

“What?” Kuro asked in surprise, looking concerned. “_Here_, here? In a reality?”

“Yeah,” Keith nodded. “When Ranveig got killed at the kral zera, Kolivan realized his bases were going to fall to his rivals. That’s when he sent me in to extract my mom from the one she was on…it was a high security base where they were doing experiments. One of them was using a cannister of pure quintessence they found on an abandoned ship in the Quantum Abyss.”

“That was my ship!” Romelle exclaimed. “That was the cargo Bandor and I were moving, that broke open and gave me the overexposure that messed up my memory!”

“Exactly,” Keith nodded. “Fortunately, they’d only found the one cannister. But it was pretty pure quintessence, way different from anything they’d ever had. One of the experiments they did was to expose a prisoner to it in doses that were just low enough not to kill him, but prolonged enough to make changes.”

“What kind of changes?” Shiro asked, his concern now matching Kuro’s.

“The same kind of changes you just saw in that video,” Keith replied. “It wasn’t as drastic, obviously, but that’s probably because a Galra prisoner has a physical body while Black was made out of energy. But he definitely mutated, and he definitely became one scary as hell…whatever he turned into.”

“You’re talking about a Formless with an actual physical body of its own,” Onyx frowned, trying not to shudder at the possibility. “That is not something we need. Where is it now?”

Keith took a deep breath. He squeezed his eyes shut as if preparing himself for the onslaught of his own stupidity.

“We set it loose.”

“You set it _loose_!?” Curtis exclaimed, staring at Keith in shock. “You just…released a flesh-eating, soul-devouring piece of living darkness off into the wild?”

“I didn’t know what it was at that point!” Keith defended. “And neither did Mom! She knew it was a bad idea though, because Kolivan’s orders were for us to destroy it before we left the base. But we were attacked by two of Ranveig’s rivals, and the only way to escape was to give them the codes for the vault it was in. They didn’t realize it was a living weapon, they thought it was some kind of gun or something, I guess.”

“Keith, this is really serious,” Shiro said worriedly. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“Because the Blade’s been hunting it,” Keith answered. “Or trying to, anyway. After the Last Stand, Mom and I took Kolivan out to Ranveig’s base…we figured it would still be there because the base was high security and the outer defenses would be up. But at some point in the years while Voltron was missing, power to the base got disrupted. With nobody still alive there to maintain it, the weapon escaped. That’s where we were again, when we left for that month while you were watching over Adam. We figured it was our mistake, and we had to hunt it down and fix it.”

Everyone went silent again, while they went over this new information. Keith, particularly, looked pale enough to pass out now that he was fully aware of the real danger he, Kolivan, and Krolia had repeatedly been walking into by trying to track this thing themselves. Shiro noticed as well.

“Okay,” Shiro breathed, running a hand through his hair. “Nobody—and I mean nobody—goes out hunting this thing alone again. Two bonded, at least, on any expedition. And no expeditions at all unless you get a solid lead on where it is. This is the kind of thing we dispatch Lions and maybe even Sincline for, just to be on the safe side.”

“You mean to capture it if possible, rather than destroy it,” Allura inferred. “A small army instead of two or three people can do that easier.”

“That’s exactly what I’d like,” Shiro confirmed. “At the very least, we need samples of this thing. We’re talking about revolutionizing how whole galaxies power their civilizations with these Nocturline crystals, which is absolutely going to expose countless people to low, sustained levels of quintessence. We need to know if that was all that created this thing or if there’s something else, because if that’s all then we risk doing the exact same thing to every person we expose to these crystals over the long term.”

“That’s…frighteningly correct,” Allura agreed with a sigh.

“This just keeps getting better and better,” Veronica murmured.

“Okay everyone, I think we can end this meeting,” Shiro announced, already rising from his seat. “I need to speak to Kolivan right away. Allura, Curtis? You guys come with me, please. Ryou…”

Kuro looked up at him, and Shiro wordlessly motioned toward Nikolaev with his head. The Bronze was sitting in silence with his head in his hands, undoubtedly reliving his old trauma again now that he’d finally been able to speak of it. Kuro nudged him, leaning in to speak to him quietly.

“Everyone else…I don’t even know,” Shiro admitted. “Sorry, I’m a little thrown off by all this new information. Do whatever you need to do to process this, and remember that New Year’s Eve is tomorrow. We have a huge diplomatic conference in three days that we have to pretend is a wedding, try to stay sane until it’s over.”

He paused as he reached the door, looking around at all of them.

“I know this is hard, and I know it just keeps getting harder. My phone’s always on, and I’m sure Adam will agree that our door is always open. Go get some coffee or something, let’s try to get through this.”

Everyone shuffled out slowly, and Onyx stepped back out of the way. Shiro and Allura were first, followed by Kuro guiding Nikolaev along with a hand on his shoulder. The four younger Paladins went next, chattering amongst themselves in a mix of fear and excitement.

“How did you think that crystal might be a prison?” Hunk asked Lance curiously.

“I was playing Swordcraft 2 yesterday!” Lance replied as the small group went around the corner. “You play enough RPGs you start to learn that if there’s a big crystal, something nasty is locked in it.”

Someone tapped him on the shoulder lightly, and Onyx looked down at Curtis. The Gold stepped out of the way as well, standing beside him while the others left.

“Have you had any success lately?” Curtis asked, looking concerned. “Finding the packs that took care of you again. You’ve been looking for a long time.”

“Yeah, I have, and no luck,” Onyx admitted, running a hand tiredly through his hair. “I was so young, and with everything going on there was no way for me to keep track of where I was going as I ran. I just hope they’re still out there, that they’re okay. Their corner of the borderlands was crumbling too.”

Curtis gave his shoulder a squeeze, and gave him a small, reassuring smile.

“You’ll find them,” he said confidently. “And you’ll find what’s left of your original troupe. They’re out there, separated and searching, just like the rest of us.”

He patted Onyx’s shoulder lightly and left to join Shiro and Allura, and as the hall emptied out Onyx hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and began wandering back through the Garrison halls.

It had been a pretty bad news kind of morning, he needed something to cheer himself up a little. And he knew exactly where to find an easily infuriated red Guardian to taunt until he felt better.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this. I don't know how many of you follow my tumblr, but I took a week-long hiatus to relax and doodle a bit for personal reasons. Now, given that we're about to go into a ridiculous heat wave here and only the downstairs is air conditioned--down where all the distractions are--we'll see how much I can get done before the heat wave breaks.

His boots hit the cracked marble floor in a way that would have echoed dramatically if the ceiling had still been intact. But the great arches and domes were gone now, revealing a swathe of open sky where once there had been lovingly hand-painted angels and saints.

Adam felt no sense of loss. He valued that open sky, the mask of blue that hinted at the sea of stars beyond and the freedom they brought, far more than the stupid old paintings. He valued a lot of things more than the stupid old paintings, and more than the statues and decoration that were no longer present. It had all most likely been spirited away after the invasion, relics rescued by faithful to keep them from being destroyed by the occupying force, lovingly protected in homes and encampments where they gave a sense of hope.

At least, that was what Adam hoped had happened. The more realistic scenario was that elders from the Catholic Church had put together teams to go into as many churches as possible to sneak anything valuable back to the Vatican under cover of night, probably while leaving their flocks to fend for themselves. Even now the world was struggling to survive, and the Pope and his Bishops sat surrounded with gold and riches.

Adam’s view of his Church had been solidified shortly after his transfer to the Garrison. Contrary to expectation, it hadn’t been the secular schedules and teachings of a military academy that specialized in space that had done it, but the church in the city nearby. When Adam had needed his faith the most, when he’d snuck out of the dorms and wandered this new, unfamiliar place looking for solace and found himself drawn to the familiar spires and stained glass, he had found himself turned away.

The church is closed. Come back during business hours. Confession hours specifically, if you want to speak to the Father, or schedule a meeting. He’s booked until next week.

Sorry, God’s clocked out for the weekend. Go fuck yourself. Be sure to drop some cash in the box on your way out.

So Adam, spiteful thing that he was, had renounced Catholicism and his dog tags listed his faith as Jedi. It was nothing against God Himself, more of a personal war Adam had been waging ever since, against a corrupt institution that had twisted Him into a money-making mascot and used that power to control others. It was why he, a man who routinely flipped off nuns or stood by the Salvation Army bucket counting out hundred dollar bills before only dropping in fifty cents, still had an unshakeable faith that had carried him through the worst.

He didn’t pray, not anymore. He didn’t adorn things in crosses or candles. He didn’t buy relics or blessed charms, or give any outward hint whatsoever of his beliefs. It was simply lain as a solid foundation, immovable and steady no matter how much everything else shifted.

The world was terrible, the universe was falling apart. But everyone was connected and nobody was really irredeemable, that One Thing was always there. It was inside everyone, an internal force rather than external, lending strength to those who looked for it within themselves. This was not a common view, which was perhaps why people had so much trouble understanding Adam’s motivations in life.

He was a raging asshole in behavior and voice, but exceedingly kind in action. Because God didn’t exist to snap His fingers and make everything better, He didn’t affect the universe from the outside. God carried the strong through hard times to that they could carry the weak in turn. He provided for all, it was human free will that skewed the scales. There was no reason whatsoever that he should have access to billions of dollars even after the collapse of an entire planet’s interwoven economy, except for his relation to the woman sitting in front of him.

The polite thing to do would be approach quietly, grant this dilapidated building the respect most showed it as a sacred place of worship. Adam wasn’t polite.

He walked down the main aisle until he reached the row where his mother sat. Planting a foot on the back of the bench in front of her, he gave it a hard kick and sent it toppling forward, crashing into the one in front of it with a sound that very much did echo up here where the roof was still intact.

Janet didn’t jump, or even seem surprised. Not that he expected her to, not only had he been very loud in his entrance but the Blue Lion’s head was visible through the hole in the ceiling, which had pretty much announced his arrival before he’d ever walked in.

Someone was startled though, and that someone was Simon. He wasn’t a religious man himself and had been waiting outside, Adam had passed him on the way in. The loud noise brought him very quickly, a sign of just how devoted he was to this crazy mess of a woman even after spending years watching her descend into…whatever the hell she was these days.

“It’s fine,” Janet assured Simon, bringing him to a slow stop.

Adam didn’t know what exactly Simon thought he was going to do even if he decided to snap Janet’s neck right now, and from the look on his face Simon didn’t either. He was visibly torn between the two people he least wanted to have in the same room as each other, and Raji’s appearance a moment later didn’t help. He sidled in with his hands in his pockets, probably having heard the crashing and more curious than anything. Simon’s visible discomfort increased, which told Adam one thing he hadn’t known before.

Raji would probably take his nephew’s side in a fight, if it came down to him or the human woman.

“You have a lot of people trying to kill you these days?” Adam asked Janet unapologetically. “Shocker.”

“Adam,” Simon sighed, putting a hand on Raji’s shoulder and spinning him around, giving him a shove back toward the exit. “If you’re here just to start a fight—”

“I said it’s fine,” Janet repeated herself calmly, still not looking up at any of them. She was holding a rosary, Adam could see now, and her eyes were closed.

Simon looked between them, then sighed again and backed off. As he did he made a motion warning Adam that he was watching, to which Adam responded with a hand gesture that was rude at the best of times but probably worth at least three confessions if done in the confines of a church. Raji only snickered on his way out.

When they were gone Adam moved down the now-wide-open aisle and dropped down next to Janet in the pew. He reached over and pulled the rosary out of her hands, balling it up and throwing it up toward the apse. It hit a fallen piece of wall up at the crossing and bounced down, disappearing into a pile of stone and rubble.

As if dealing with a child having a temper tantrum and not a fully grown man who could twist her head off her neck, Janet let out a breath through her nose and opened her eyes, folding her hands in her lap, waiting for him to calm down and speak.

Her lack of any real reaction was infuriating. She had no right to be so calm and unmoved, to act as if he was just one more inconvenience in a long, busy day. She had no regard for the fact that he could hurt her if she made him mad enough, or for the fact that he was rightfully angry at all. If he did end up taking out his bayard he’d do something he definitely would not regret, and that she would definitely deserve.

But Curtis had conditioned those hostile reactions out of him a long time ago, and Takashi had reinforced gentler behavior. No thanks to the woman sitting next to him, he was an angry man and certainly aggressive to a point, but he was not a violent one.

“There’s a wedding tomorrow,” Adam said flatly, looking up at the collapsing apse instead of at Janet. “My wedding, to be exact.”

“I’m aware,” Janet acknowledged. “The whole planet is.”

“Good. Sofia and Mark are on the guest list, which means Gabriel will be there. Which means you and Simon are also going to be there. With your mouths shut, preferably. And you’re going to find and bring Enzo.”

“Are you trying to turn a diplomatic conference into a circus?”

“Don’t,” Adam warned. “I don’t give a shit if sarcasm is your emotional defense, this isn’t funny. None of this is a joke, don’t you dare treat it that way.”

There was a pause of about a heartbeat longer than most people would have given, just long enough to become uncomfortable, before he saw her head bow ever so slightly out of the corner of his eye.

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t know if she meant it or was just saying it because it was expected, and to be perfectly honest he didn’t care. And that in itself was freeing. He wasn’t here because he was trying to get her to see he was there anymore. This wasn’t about _her_, it was finally about _him_.

“Gabriel’s at an age where he notices things,” Adam said after another pause. “Even if he’s mentally younger than he physically looks, children aren’t stupid. You mean the world to him, he’s going to look back on tomorrow and remember if you’re not there. He’s going to ask questions, he’s going to want the truth.

“I know you have it in you to be a decent mother and grandmother. Even if you treated me like absolute shit, I can see it in Sofia and her son. Personally, I wouldn’t shed a tear if you dropped dead in five minutes, but I care about _them_, and they care about you.”

“I know that my choices were bad ones,” Janet’s response was a little quieter than her initial words, and she actively looked away from him this time. “But I did what I could under the circumstances. I made the decisions I had to.”

“You made the decisions you wanted to,” Adam answered. He was slowly feeling less angry as he got to speak his mind, finally free enough to say whatever came to him instead of carefully curating his words. “You were special forces, you’re a highly trained combat soldier. Your specialty was schmoozing your way into deep enemy territory and absconding with valuable things, _mother_.”

“And is that what you think I should’ve done?” Janet asked irritably. “Taken you and run? To where? And lived what kind of life?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Adam shot back. “You didn’t take me away because it would mean going underground. It would mean giving up your money and being powerful. Fuck the “sometimes there is no right choice” crap, because there’s always a right choice. In this case the right choice was to go back to living an obscure little life in a peaceful little town with both of your children and your weirdo alien boyfriend. But that would mean no sprawling villa and cooking your own meals. And I gotta say, Simon’s a pretty questionable character at best but at least he was willing to try that. The bitch of it is, if you had actually helped him instead of just signing adoption papers and looking the other way, he could’ve succeeded.”

He didn’t look at her, but he tilted his head slightly so he could have her in his view. With her rosary gone she was gripping the hem of her shirt tightly, her knuckles turning white. He waited to see if she would argue, but she didn’t.

Adam sighed and leaned back in the pew, crossing his arms and looking around. It had been so long since he’d really felt welcome and at home in a church, and this place felt…sad. He didn’t feel God here, this was just an empty building standing monument to a time before the Galra.

“I don’t believe in continuing cycles,” he said finally. “You and me? That’s done, it’s over. You’re not my mother, and I don’t care about you as one. I don’t care what your excuses are, or how hard you try to convince yourself that you did the right thing…I don’t have to forgive you, and I don’t want to. Your choices put you where you are and you’re the one who has to live with that, not me.

“But someday I’m going to have children, and it won’t be fair for them to go through what I did. I can’t just hide their history from them and hope they’re okay with not knowing who they are and where they came from. I don’t want you in my life, but it’s not my place to decide if my kids have you in theirs. I don’t want to be like you, I want my future to be a good one, I want my family to be well-adjusted. So you’re going to show up tomorrow, you’re going to act happy to be there, you’re going to go meet people and introduce yourself to my husband’s family and be normal. The only difference between us and a real family will be that you’re going to stay the hell away from me. And you’re going to find Enzo and invite him and tell him I want to talk to him before everything starts, because he’s just as much a victim of you and Carlos as I was.”

He let that sink in, feeling he’d made himself clear. Janet was his mother, there was no way he was ever going to be able to fully shake the connection he’d spent so much of his childhood trying to strengthen, but he no longer needed it the way he once had. He had a family now…Takashi, Curtis, Lance, even Kuro and Keith, and in a way Hunk and Pidge. He had Takashi’s grandmother and great-aunts, he had Sofia and Mark and Gabriel. And he had friends…Allura, Romelle, Veronica, to an extent even Lotor and a handful of Alteans. His life was full now, with people he’d chosen rather than people he’d been stuck with.

Janet was just there. She was an issue he would be dealing with for a little while, but he would heal. And he did not need to forgive her or let her into his personal life to make that happen.

“Did you actually love me?” Adam asked, looking back up at the sky through the fallen ceiling. “All bullshit aside, just be honest me, I think I deserve that.”

Janet took a deep breath, and finally deflated. The pretense of being unaffected slipped away, letting a bone-deep weariness seep in. It was evident in the way she let herself slouch, the way her shoulders drooped.

“Of course I loved you,” she said tiredly. “I still do, I always have.”

“Hm.”

That was the only answer Adam gave to that. He straightened up and stood, smoothing his shirt down and stepping out of the row.

“I don’t believe there’s anyone who can’t be redeemed if they want to be,” he said after a moment. “But I don’t know if you want to be, or if you want it bad enough to make it happen. Because in this case, it’s not a matter of just waiting long enough for the bad stuff to be forgotten. If you ever decide you want to make up for what you did, you better be ready to earn it. And you better be willing to go into it not knowing if you’ll ever get there, because I may just never decide you’ve done enough.”

He didn’t stay to discuss the matter further. He didn’t even really want to be here discussing it now, but the fact was that Takashi was his family now and he needed to do his best to make sure his family was happy. That meant making sure that he was whole, and finally facing his mother was something he’d needed to do to get there.

It had been brief and not terribly involved, but it was a start. It was a first step, it was standing up and declaring that he intended to take up space without apology and that any problems arising from that were on his parents’ shoulders, not his.

Adam thought he was being very generous, honestly. He didn’t even know if he and Takashi would ever decide to have children, but leaving the door open for Janet and Simon to be part of those potential children’s lives as long as they didn’t fuck up was being rather kind on his part. Whether they did enough to prove they deserved to keep the honor was on them, and if they pushed him even a little bit too far he would cut them off in a heartbeat.

Both of them. Janet may have made the terrible decisions, and Simon may have done his best to pull her up, but in the end he’d let her pull him down. The ice he stood on was just as thin as his girlfriend’s.

Adam kept his head high and stride resolute as he left the church and boarded Blue, waiting until he reached her cockpit to sink into the pilot seat and put his face in his hands.

He didn’t know if he was handling this right. Was there even a right way to handle it? Was he giving too little, overblowing the hardships he’d supposedly been through? He’d wanted for nothing, materially. He’d always been provided for, always had the best schooling and great opportunities. If he wanted it, it was bought for him. He’d never struggled financially or gone hungry, it was far more than so many other kids had.

Or was he giving too much? Leaving an opening to be taken advantage of, to let himself be walked all over again? Once he allowed Janet and Simon to participate in his life, even just nominally, it was possible she would just keep being the way she was and he would feel pressured to keep accepting it for Sofia’s and Gabriel’s sake.

He just wanted what was best for everyone he cared about. He wanted what was best for himself. It was such a thin line to walk, putting up a wall to keep himself safe but leaving the gate open just a crack in case they eventually proved they could be let in. Half of him wanted to slam that gate in their faces no matter what the outcome, half of him wanted to pretend he didn’t need a wall at all.

Dr. Solarin assured him there was no straight and easy path in this, that it was all very complicated and that he shouldn’t feel bad he didn’t have all the answers. He was allowed to be angry, he was allowed to be sad, and he was allowed to feel those things for as long as he needed to. Maybe it would take months to untangle his feelings enough to find sure footing here, maybe it would take years, but as long as he didn’t let those feelings interfere with what he felt for his husband and found family that was okay.

He felt a soft nudge in the back of his mind, a gentle reminder that Blue was here and understood. It helped, honestly, having someone so deeply entrenched in his head that he didn’t have to put what he was going through into words. She was just there, he was never really alone, and for him that was reassuring.

“Okay, let’s head home,” he sighed, letting his hands fall away as the cockpit’s overlays began to boot up. “We have one more day and way too many things to do.”

* * * * * * * * * *

**_Ten thousand years ago_**:

“Isn’t it strange that Emperor Zarkon has suddenly decided to speak to Father and the others again after more than fifty decaphoebs?” Allura asked, picking up the scabbard from the bed as she passed it in her pacings of the room. “And to ask them to accompany him into the rift, no less.”

“Nobody is going into the rift, Nightingale,” Melenor’s reply was as gentle and tempered as always, the mark of a Queen who had spent her life avoiding the appearance of anything but neutrality. “They’re finally going to destroy it, but to do that they need the combined strength of all the Lions.”

“They’re going to destroy it,” Allura repeated, pulling the sword free and giving it a few measured swings. “That’s funny as well. Who ever heard of destroying a hole by blowing it up bigger?”

Melenor let out a breath through her nose, the closest to a scoff that she ever got. She didn’t look away from the mirror, from pinning her hair in place.

“Merla is in fits,” Allura tried.

“Queen Merla,” Melenor corrected lightly.

“_Queen _Merla is in fits,” Allura said obediently. “I heard one of her messengers tell our Guard that she was demanding Blaytz deny Zarkon’s request. They say she doesn’t trust her sister anymore, or Zarkon by proxy.”

“And what is a Princess doing eavesdropping on the private conversations of others?” Melenor asked, looking at her in the mirror with a raised eyebrow.

“Collecting intelligence,” Allura answered, unrepentant. “Father says that one can’t rule properly if they only pay attention to pageantry but turn a blind eye to what goes on beneath the surface.”

“I don’t think he meant that you should spy on foreign messengers.”

“Yes he did,” Allura insisted. She lunged forward, planting a neat strike in the heart of an imaginary enemy with the sword. “He said it this morning. He was standing right next to me.”

“Of course he was,” Melenor murmured, not actually meant for Allura’s ears. Louder, she continued. “Queen Merla’s relationship with Empress Honerva has suffered ever since the rift opened, and she’s understandably wary of it. But Zarkon loves her, and so he’s resisted calls to close it. Your father believes, and I agree, that this moment of weakness on Zarkon’s part will not last and must be taken advantage of. I promise you, the Empress has nothing to do with attempting to close the rift, it’s the last thing she would ever do.”

“But can Zarkon be trusted?” Allura wondered. “Our people were once friends, the closest of allies. Now Daibazaal’s borders have been closed to outsiders for almost three dodecaphoebs and they’ve ceased most trade. Isn’t Zarkon the one who came up with the amazing idea of breaking a hole to somehow make it smaller and reached out to everyone else? How trustworthy is information from him?”

Melenor rose and primly crossed the room. With barely two quick motions she quickly and expertly disarmed her sword-swinging daughter, sliding the blade back into its scabbard with a smart snap.

“Your father and Zarkon have been friends for hundreds of decaphoebs,” she said gently. “Their friendship is strong, despite the setbacks of the last few dodecaphoebs, and now your father sees a way to rekindle it before it begins to die. Love is the ultimate motivator, Allura, whether it be for friends or family or for a partner. Sometimes it may motivate one to take risks others might deem too large, but ultimately this is his decision. Now please go change out of your sparring gear…as you said, Queen Merla is in fits, and we’ll be leaving shortly for Nalquod for a visit.”

“Yes, mother.”

Melenor gave her a kiss on the forehead, and Allura let herself out of her parents’ bedroom. She began to unbraid the long plait her hair had been pulled into for the morning as she walked—or, more appropriately, sulked—down the hall to her own quarters.

She didn’t want to go visit Merla. Her mother’s best friend was a lovely woman, to be sure, one of Allura’s favorite “aunts,” but Nalquod just wasn’t where she wanted to be today.

So instead of going to change into a travel dress, Allura quickly got cleaned up and dug out her most average-looking flight suit. She put her hair up into a bun that would be covered by a helmet—she still had her old one from when she was first learning to pilot—and slipped out of her room about a varga before she figured her mother would come calling.

The Red Lion was in her hangar, as expected, her particle barrier down so her father’s engineers could do some minor adjustments. Allura kept her head down and grabbed one of the small crates that was being loaded, walking up the loading ramp at a busy pace that matched the other workers.

She knew her way around the hold, which was mostly empty except for the few boxes being stacked. She slowed her walk slightly, waiting for the young man ahead of her to set down his small burden and leave the hold. When his footsteps moved out of earshot, Allura dropped her crate and ran to the back of the hold.

There was a small utility closet there, one that was never used since there was a larger closet toward the front. Allura had hidden away back there many times as a child, though now she was an adult and there were several garments hung in here, so it was a bit of a tight squeeze.

She had about half a varga to regret her decision, as the doboshes ticked by with nothing happening and her boredom quickly growing, but eventually she felt the faint vibrations of the Lion beginning to rise.

“Oh, finally, it’s getting a bit hot in here.”

Allura let out a shriek and flattened herself against the side of the closet, slapping at the garment bag that had suddenly lunged at her. The garment bag gave a string of excited “ouch!”es, and after a moment of trying to defend without arms a familiar head popped out of the top.

“Coran!” Allura squealed, her startlement immediately turning into annoyance. “What are you doing in here!?”

“Hiding,” Coran replied.

Allura waited for more clarification, but none was forthcoming. She sighed, pulling off her helmet.

“_Why?”_

“Well,” Coran started wiggling, fighting himself free, which was difficult in the close confines of the closet. “Queen Melenor asked me to come wait on the Red Lion for when you sneaked on, and to keep an eye on you while King Alfor was busy on Daibazaal.”

“Oh!” Allura exclaimed in frustration. “How does she always know?”

The closet door opened then, revealing a first surprised, then confused looking Alfor. He looked back and forth between them, at Allura doing her best to look innocent and Coran confidentially twirling his moustache.

“Why?” Was all he said, tiredly. “I specifically requested that you and your mother go check in on Queen Merla.”

Allura quickly looked for some way to escape, as if she hadn’t already been immediately recognized, but the Red Lion was undoubtedly already in the air and probably en route to Daibazaal. Her father looked disappointed, which was a look he had more and more often these days as her parents kept trying to turn her into the respectable kind of woman who knew how to do her part.

“I—“ she started.

“—am sorry,” Coran broke in, talking over her. “It was my idea, Your Majesty. The Princess has never even seen Daibazaal, I thought this might be her best chance. If the Galra are going to warm up to us again it could still be decaphoebs before they open their borders. She may not get to visit for a very long time.”

Alfor sighed heavily, looking between them. Allura could tell he didn’t buy it, but he seemed very tired today. Not physically, necessarily, but as if he was having some kind of emotional reckoning.

“Of course it was your idea, Coran,” Alfor allowed. “But I wish you had run it by me first.”

“I will definitely remember that for next time,” Coran agreed.

Alfor stepped aside so the two could stumble out of the little storage area, and led them to the cockpit. The Red Lion was already slowing to a stop over a purple-hued planet, even at a lazy speed the Lions could cover vast distances in only doboshes. She held in that position for a little bit until others started to appear, first the Green then the Yellow, before finally the Blue appeared from the farthest reaches of the system.

“Hello, Allura,” Blaytz’s teasing voice came over Red’s speakers before his visual was even activated. “Your mother asked me to remind you to be on your best behavior and mind your manners.”

Alfor looked at her with a mixture of amusement and annoyance, but then the Lions all received a signal saying they had been given clearance to land. Coran and Allura stepped back, letting Alfor pilot his ship, while they watched on from the sidelines.

The Daibazaal on the viewscreens looked similar to the one Allura had seen in pictures, but it definitely wasn’t the same. The skyline of it’s capital city was more condensed and filled with buildings, and everything was awash in a purple glow.

Allura was familiar with quintessence of course, both in the form of an ether that could be manipulated for alchemy and in its more liquid form that could be used for fuel. Over the course of her life, Altea had been slowly bolstering its already robust solar and wind power industry with the addition of imported quintessence, but although the kingdom wouldn’t say so for fear of trade breaking down completely, Daibazaal’s quintessence exports were…questionable.

Something in the processing made it impure. Technically it would work with any technology, but although Altea imported the minimum amount listed in the trade agreement the Chamber of Power and Fuel ended up quietly disposing of most of it. Alteans simply didn’t want to buy or use it, too many were sensitive enough to the quintessence field that they felt Daibazaal quintessence imports felt “dirty.”

As the Lions came into land, Allura practically felt that filth crawling across her skin. Everything here was clearly run by quintessence, and all of it gave off that same uncomfortable feeling. It was hanging in the air, flowing through the streets, contaminating everything that was bathed in its unnatural purple glow.

She had once seen a vial of pure, unprocessed quintessence in person. It’s beautiful white shine, the strong sensation of life it gave off…it was extremely powerful just as it was, she didn’t know why it needed to be processed at all.

“Be on your best behavior,” Alfor advised as Red settled solidly on the landing pad next to the three other descending Lions. “You’ll undoubtedly be escorted to the palace to wait with the Empress, where safety precautions have undoubtedly been taken. Stay there until this is over.”

“Yes, Father,” Allura answered obediently, suddenly wishing she hadn’t tagged along at all.

This alien world outside the familiar Red Lion was not inviting or clean, and she could only imagine what kind of Altean alchemist this Empress Honerva was if she hadn’t run screaming from this place long ago.

* * * * *

“This doesn’t feel very reinforced or safe to me.”

Coran took a breath, reaching over to pluck the glass pyramid out of Allura’s hands and set it gently back on its display pedestal. She made a face and kept walking, feeling him hurrying behind her.

“This is the private residence of the Emperor and Empress,” Coran chided. “Emperor Zarkon was very kind in his offer to allow you to wait here.”

“It doesn’t feel like a private residence,” Allura protested, gesturing around. “It doesn’t feel like a private anything. Nobody lives here. Nobody sleeps here.”

She moved through the luxurious space, crossing the living area and waving a hand to indicate a blanket.

“Fabric doesn’t land like this when you throw it,” she complained. “Somebody set this out and folded it to look like it’s been used. Those cushions are placed that way. That fire cabinet has never even been used.”

It was a beautiful home to be sure, or would have been if anyone lived there, and maybe it really had once housed the royal couple of Daibazaal. But it was very carefully staged right now, as if it was meant to convince visitors that Zarkon and Honerva lived a certain way when in reality they probably hadn’t been out in this palace wing in decaphoebs.

A music box, arranged just so, with a bit of a necklace spilling out of its slightly open lid. An inkwell—and a dry one at that!—set up with a pen beside a carefully arranged pile of papers with mundane notes that were faded enough that they’d probably been written a long time ago. A wardrobe, cracked open just a bit, with the train of an elegant dress carefully lain out as if to make it look as if its owner had haphazardly shoved it back inside before darting off to important meetings.

The only thing that did look actually used in here were the pet toys. Allura hadn’t seen the pet to which they belonged, but whatever it was had claws and liked to scratch on its post by the door.

“Look at this!” Allura said angrily, stalking across the quarters to lift a crown from the vanity. “This is one of Altea’s Ancestral Jewels! Father had this crown made from it as a wedding gift, he told me so.”

“I remember,” Coran agreed. “And I’m looking at it. …what am I looking at?”

“It’s just been dropped here and used as a prop!” Allura complained. “This is an insult! We’re so worried about not hurting their feelings over buying their dirty quintessence, and they’re over here just leaving an Altean jewel laying around in a dark room! It’s not even locked up safely!”

“Princess,” Coran said gently, taking the crown out of her hands, “I know you don’t like this place, and that you have a lot of second-hand knowledge of the Empress from others, but she’s Altean. She would never treat an Ancestral Jewel with anything other than the greatest respect.”

“No, Queen Merla treats her Jewel with respect,” Allura grumbled, taking the crown back. “She wears it proudly and takes great care with it, she doesn’t leave it lying around in an unused room.”

Allura was, admittedly, fairly new to diplomacy. She was only in her fifties, and had always been in the shadows of her father and mother when interacting with foreign leaders. She’d never had to deal head-on with matters that were too touchy, there were a vast number of diplomats and advisors who helped her parents navigate those sorts of things.

So she had never felt as insulted by another leader as she felt by Empress Honerva right now. The Ancestral Jewels were the pride of Altea, royal jewels that were only to even be touched by the highest ranking and most worthy of hands. Her father had believed that an Altean queen, even one of a foreign planet, needed an Altean crown to do her justice and had loaned a Jewel to decorate both Honerva’s and Merla’s crowns upon their marriages.

They were loaned gifts, on the understanding that Daibazaal and Nalquod would both return to having native-born queens in future generations and that the crowns of the Altean-born ones would be eventually be returned to their homeland.

Allura had seen the care and attention that Queen Merla dedicated to the jewel that adorned her otherwise Nalquodian crown, her reverence for the planet that had born both her and the stone. She treated the gift with the importance it deserved, especially when she knew Melenor or Allura were visiting.

Honerva didn’t even bother to send someone in to hide her crown and pretend she didn’t just leave it laying around.

“Where is she, anyway?” Allura asked crossly, stalking back across the room and throwing open the balcony doors. “If the Empress isn’t waiting here in in the safety of her quarters, then where is she watching this from?”

The growing vibrations she felt through the floor had drawn her out here, to where she could now see the Lions in the distance beginning to rise into the sky. Five instead of four, and within a few moments her ire was forgotten and instead replaced with awe as she finally witnessed the five great ships forming Voltron for the first time.

She had heard the stories, even seen pictures, but none of that held a candle to the grand sight of the mech standing tall over Daibazaal’s capital city. This was the legendary defender of the known universe, piloted by five great leaders of the Almadari System, a feat so grand it had never been copied in the dodecaphoebs since the Lions’ completion.

“Hang on,” Coran warned, taking the crown from her limp fingers and steadying her with one hand. “They’re going to be removing the dome, things might get a little unsteady.”

As if on cue, loud, whining sirens began to wail across the city, warning residents that the moment had come and that anyone who had not yet sought shelter needed to do so immediately. Soldiers who had been milling around out in the grand courtyards fell into line, forming a living barrier between the hiding citizenry and whatever might come through the rift.

The ground shook violently as Voltron used its sword, plunging it into the rift below and disturbing it’s semi-solid surface. When the mech began to sink, Allura felt Coran’s grip on her tighten slightly.

“Is that supposed to happen?” She asked, looking up at him. “Voltron’s being pulled in, they don’t look like they can get free. What’s going on?”

“I…” Coran was clearly uncertain, torn between admitting something might be wrong and his unwavering faith in her father’s wisdom.

Something gave, and the mech’s slow descent suddenly became much faster. Allura watched in horror as Voltron disappeared, swallowed up by the eerie light that lapped against the edges of the spacetime tear like a pool.

Of course she knew that she should stay back here, where it was safe, but Alteans were not known for being passive observers. Allura jogged backward a few steps before darting forward, hearing Coran calling for her to stop but ignoring him as she jumped the balcony railing and dropped down into the gardens one story below.

She started running, jumping the low plants and decorative flowers like hurdles rather than zig-zag around, making her way across the gardens as quickly as she could. There were a row of recreational transports parked at the far side, and she could still hear Coran calling after her as she jumped into one and tore off in the direction of the rift.

The maze-like streets of Daibazaal were empty as she sped down them, unhindered by traffic or people. She didn’t know her way but she knew the general direction, the white light of the rift was a stark contrast against the purple glow that seemed to hang over the entire planet like a shroud. She made it to the high fence that surrounded the processing facility, an eerie behemoth that had been built around the rift to draw quintessence from it for power, and found it unmanned.

Staff had either been sent home or were in safer areas. There was nobody to stop her as she scaled one of the low walls and dropped down into the courtyard on the other side, sprinting across the open ground she recognized as the place where the Red Lion had landed.

“Princess! You need to get back behind the wall, it’s not safe!”

Allura was halfway to the metal staircase that led to the top of the processing facility when a Galra man and woman caught up with her, not soldiers but two familiar faces she recognized from being introduced to some of the staff upon arrival. They had probably seen her come in on the video cameras and were now risking their own safety to get her.

“Get back!” She ordered, waving them away. “Something is wrong, I can feel it!”

The thick air of Daibazaal was only growing thicker as she got closer to the rift, and here past the wall it had a positively malevolent sensation to it. The two workers did not take her warning, following her up to the top of the staircase where it let out onto the great open space where the rift’s dome had once been settled.

Allura slowed down, eying the churning pool of light with trepidation as the two Galra caught up with her, all three of them panting from their run.

“The readings in this area are getting higher,” the woman warned, checking a readout on her scanner. “In a few doboshes we’ll be risking overexposure by being here.”

Allura thought she saw something dark darting around in the rift, like a great predatory fish gliding along just under the surface of a sea. Beyond the uncomfortable feeling it elicited, she could also sense something else.

Perhaps because she was so in-tune with her father’s gifts, or perhaps simply because her own were becoming stronger with practice, she swore she could feel the Lions nearby. Particularly the Red Lion, whose presence had been constant all her life and to which she had grown accustomed to.

Distress. There was so much distress. She couldn’t hear anyone or see anyone, the only sense she could pick up anything with was her alchemical gift, but she could feel how distraught her father was and could have sworn she was picking up a faint glimmer of anger from the Red Lion.

“We need to go,” the man implored, daring to put a hand on her arm in a way that said such things were not acceptable here the way they might be on Altea. “Princess, quintessence overexposure can be fatal, you can’t stay here.”

“We can’t just go,” Allura protested, hesitating. What could she even do? “Something is terribly wrong, someone is calling for help!”

“There’s no one there,” the woman insisted. “It’s only us.”

Only it wasn’t. Allura couldn’t hear the actual words, but she could feel someone’s pain. It was shrouded in the shadows that seeped from the rift, almost hidden by their darkness, but it was there. Someone was in a fight for their life, and possibly the lives of others, the sense of desperation was almost palpable.

She couldn’t bear it. What if it was her father? Or Trigel, or Blaytz, or Gyrgan? She didn’t know Emperor Zarkon as well as she knew the others, but even if it was him, could she just leave him to whatever fate was dragging him down?

Allura pulled free from the two workers, ignoring their protests as she sprinted to the edge of the rift. She could feel it when the leaking quintessence began to grow thick, the unbridled energy pouring out of the crevasse and flowing across the ground, but she pushed on. She didn’t stop until she was standing at the very edge, looking down into the pool of glittering light below, where she fell to her knees.

The quintessence here felt different, more solid. This liquid light was not the pale glimmer she reached for when performing her alchemical lessons in tutoring, it was tangible and real and carried weight. Without hesitation, Allura thrust her hands down into rift, reaching out to force her will through it.

She had never been taught any aggressive tactics, the use of alchemy in battle was for more advanced users, so she had to fall back on what she knew. What she knew was life, the act of healing. She focused on that distress, offering her own strength and forcing away the pain, dismantling the surrounding cloud of corruption bit by precious bit. She was nothing against this tide of shadow, she knew, but if she had it in her to save a life…

The sensations drifting through the quintessence field were strong, quickly overwhelming mortal senses that weren’t built to withstand them. Her sense of time and place evaporated, her ability to see and hear almost completely overridden. All she could do was hone in on that single fighting soul, dig into it, and hold on with everything she had.

Allura didn’t know what was really on the other side of the rift, but her struggle became a tug of war. Something was trying to pull away the one she held onto, trying to pull them—trying to pull _him_—down away into the dark.

Well, the darkness couldn’t have him. It couldn’t have anyone, not while she lived and breathed, and not while she was surrounded by the very source of life in the universe. Maybe _she _couldn’t win, but perhaps the quintessence field could.

Allura wasn’t a wave, but she hoped that she could cause one. One little stone causing one tiny ripple, magnified as it sped outward from the source. The rift didn’t spill over into the universe for a reason, and that reason had to be that it couldn’t exist here in its liquid form without some kind of special containment. It jutted up against the energy of this place, the quintessence that ran through everything in its less solid form.

She wasn’t the stone, the quintessence of this reality was. She summoned it, pulling as much of it as she could to her, building up as she had been taught in her lessons. Then she unleashed it, forcing it down into the rift with no target or focus, letting it run wild. She felt it flowing through her, felt the tingle in her fingertips as it danced along her skin, following her like a conduit until it met the end and exploding outward. It was a natural reaction she couldn’t have predicted, like sending a spark of electricity through water.

The shock was immediate and painful, completely drowning out everything else. Even her thoughts shut down, stripping her of consciousness and dragging her into the dark.

* * *

“Oh! She’s coming to! Haggar!”

“I’m here! Get back a bit, give the poor thing some breathing room!”

The first thing Allura became aware of was that she was lying on something hard. Something cool and damp was being pressed against her face, and the noises around her were deafening. There were several voices around her, and all of them were shouting to be heard.

“Princess? Princess Allura! Can you hear me?”

Her eyes fluttered open to be met with the sight of a purple-lit skyline against a backdrop of night. Sirens were blaring, people were running, and the sky was alight with dark and ominous lightning. She groaned and turned her head slightly, and found she was resting back against Gyrgan’s yellow-armored chest. Lady Trigel was kneeling beside her, holding her hand, while a female Galra with a medic insignia continued to pat her warm skin.

“Alfor, she’s awake!” Lady Trigel called.

“Princess,” the Galra woman called again, snapping her fingers in front of Allura’s face. It took her a moment to focus on them, her head felt foggy and she was achy. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Fingers?” Allura grumbled, rubbing her face with both hands. She blinked several times, now able to focus better. “Three.”

“Okay, good.”

“Allura!” Her father appeared, breathing heavily as if he’d run from wherever he’d been. He dropped to his knees next to Haggar, taking her other hand. “Are you all right?”

“I think so?” Allura guessed, trying to speak loud enough to be heard. She looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings, which were definitely not Emperor Zarkon’s palace. “What happened? Where’s Coran?”

“She doesn’t seem to be suffering from overexposure, so that’s good,” the Galra medic said. “But contact with unprocessed quintessence has been known to affect the memory, she may recall later but there’s a good chance the last varga or so is permanently gone.”

“Is it safe to move her?” Blaytz asked as he appeared, also breathing heavily. “This place is about to go up like fireworks. We’ve moved Zarkon and Honerva to an imperial ship and evacuations are underway, but we have to go too.”

“Yes, it’s safe to move her,” the Galra answered. “Sooner than later, we should all join the evacuation.”

“Wait, what’s going on?” Allura asked as Gyrgan rose, lifting her to her feet. She finally spotted Coran, who was pacing worriedly across the way in front of the Red Lion. Behind him was the rift platform, sparking dangerously and sending tremors running through the ground. “Ancients!”

“The rift is about to crater the capital is what’s going on,” Trigel answered as they rushed as a group to the Lions. “Our little trip inside is breaking it open further. We need to get out of here and figure out how to stop it from getting big enough to suck in the whole planet.”

“If that’s even possible,” her father said grimly. “I’m afraid that what we’ve done may not be so easily undone.”

Allura was unsteady on her feet at first, but with the help of her father and Coran she boarded the Red Lion. The other Paladins rushed to their own, but Emperor Zarkon wasn’t among them. Instead, the four remaining gripped the Black Lion, raising it up into orbit with them as they left the planet’s surface behind.

While her father piloted she remained in the cargo hold with Coran, trying to remember what had happened. He told her she’d jumped the balcony railing and run off but she didn’t remember that, nor was anyone at the scene apparently able to give the full story. Two witnesses had been knocked unconscious with her and claimed that in the chaos the hadn’t been able to see much anyway, and the processing facility’s surveillance system had gone down along with its power.

It was a long time before Alfor came to join them. He looked tired and drawn, not to mention bruised.

“What happened in there?” Allura asked, looking up at him with worry. “Are you all right? Is everyone okay?”

“Most are okay,” her father replied, and she suddenly understood what Blaytz had meant about Zarkon being loaded into the ship. The empty Black Lion, the Emperor’s absence…he had not survived. “Coran!”

“Oh! Um,” Coran looked down where Alfor was looking, at the crown hooked into his belt. Empress Honerva’s crown, Allura remembered picking it up off the table. “I forgot to put it back in all the panic.”

“That was my fault,” Allura frowned, carefully taking the crown from the older Altean’s belt to look at it briefly before guiltily offering it to her father. “I was holding it, I remember. I must have thrown it to him when I ran. The Empress will want it back.”

Alfor took the crown, looking down at it sadly. He sighed and set it on top of a crate, running a hand through his hair.

“A strategic evacuation of Daibazaal is going to be ordered,” he said gravely. “Citizens will be relocated to Altea, the military…probably disbanded. I’m afraid the culture of Daibazaal’s soldiers these days is going to be difficult to change, and unfortunately it’s not in line with Altea’s peaceful ways. The relocation will not be easy, the different ways may clash. But it’s the least we can offer after what we’re about to do.”

“What we’re about…you’re going to destroy Daibazaal?” Allura asked breathlessly.

“We’re going to deploy a decommissioned teludav,” Alfor confirmed. “The only way we can see of closing that rift is to compress spacetime with a flashpoint of infinite mass. Unfortunately we can’t do that and save the planet…all we can do is contain the planet itself in a particle barrier to protect the rest of the system from the explosion.”

An entire planet, gone. Millions of people suddenly without their ancestral home. And from the looks of it, the decision to do this was placed squarely on her father’s shoulders.

He checked her over one last time, making sure she was really all right, then headed back to the cockpit to begin giving instructions for what needed to be done. Coran went to help but Allura remained in the cargo hold, slowly sitting down on the floor to reflect on what was going on. Or, at least, reflect on what she could remember.

This was not a lesson in rulership she had anticipated when she’d snuck aboard Red, or even one she’d ever expected she had to learn. But suddenly, the tiara of the Princess Royale felt heavy on her head, a promise of the infinitely more dire weight that awaited her someday in the form of Altea’s crown.

* * * * * * * * * *

**_Current Day_**:

“It’s beautiful,” Allura marveled, slowly turning the silver piece over in her hands. The weight of it was solid, the size a bit too big to look right in her hands. “This is an analog timepiece?”

“A pocket watch, yeah,” Adam answered, reaching over to press a little button on the side. The cover popped open to show the face of those funny Earth clocks Allura still didn’t quite know how to read. “This one keeps track of a lot of Earth information…date, season, day or night. It’s no good in space I guess, but it’s one of those accessories that’s considered distinguished.”

Allura closed the cover and took in the casing of the “pocket watch” again, holding it up by its chain and letting it hang down and slowly spin. Silver, with Shiro’s name carved in the back along with an adorable little declaration of love, and a deep blue jewel on the front that took up most of the cover by itself.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Adam asked, gently taking the watch from her. He held it with the stone facing up, watching the light glint off of it. He sighed and dropped it down into his palm, offering it back to her. “When I first asked if you thought it would be all right to take this out of Merla’s crown, I didn’t know it was some kind of Altean crown jewel. Maybe you should take it back, I don’t have to give this to him.”

“No,” Allura said quickly, putting up both hands to stop him. “No, it really is all right.”

It was sad, almost sickeningly so, to see the jewel from Merla’s crown removed and placed into something else. Not because it was being used, the gem was absolutely beautiful and it was perfectly placed on the watch. She just hadn’t realized that Merla’s Ancestral Jewel had survived the destruction of their system until Adam had presented her with the found crown, and seeing it brought back a flood of memories and heartache.

“This was one of a collection of stones that was said to belong to Altea,” she said, giving Adam a little smile. “They could be loaned out and used, but always needed to be returned. Unfortunately, there is no Altea to return them to.”

She sighed and cupped his still-outstretched hand, opening his fingers so she could lightly run one of her own along the surface of the blue stone. It didn’t bring back only sad memories of course, there were good ones there too. Merla’s wedding, the first day she had worn the crown, had been a beautiful and happy occasion.

“I remember when the crown was first given,” she said fondly. “I was young, my father let me carry the silver box we presented it in. Merla was a child of Altea, getting married on Nalquod, this was our way of bringing the Ancients to her so they could bless the union and watch over their daughter while she was away from home. These stones were never meant to be locked away, hidden in a vault…they’re meant to be shown and seen. Having it presented to someone I love again, on their wedding day no less, is the greatest way for me to honor my ancestors that I could hope for.”

Adam still looked uncertain. He was a sweet man, when he wasn’t actively pissed off anyway, and extremely sensitive to the cultures of others. Lance said his grandfather had been a man who studied such things, and who had taught him at a young age that everyone’s past was important.

When he had first come to her with the crown, asking if she could identify the jewel type because it wasn’t native to Earth, Allura had been too shocked to protest his idea to re-set the gem as a wedding gift for Shiro. They were all aware by now that Shiro carried Merla’s core, though it clearly had a less pronounced effect than reincarnation had on the others, but nobody here really knew what that meant. Only she and Coran had known Merla personally, and only Coran had known her for most of her adult life.

After he was gone, off to have his gift commissioned, Allura had locked herself in her lab and cried herself almost hoarse. That stone was a crown jewel of Altea and it belonged to her. It had been meant to be returned after Merla’s eventual passing, not bounced around the universe into the hands of whoever found it. It had a history, a very important one, and it was full of meaning. How could anyone who wasn’t Altean really understand what they had?

Of course, that was just her feeling sorry for herself. The lovely gentlemen that she and the other Paladins still went to talk to now and then about their traumas from the war had assured her it was okay to do that sometimes because she’d been through a lot. As long as she didn’t let it stop her from going forward, it was okay to be sad about the things that she’d lost. After she’d had a night to recover from the shock she had looked at the matter more logically.

The stone was a crown jewel of Altea, and there was no more Altea. There was no home for it to return to, not until she helped Lotor create one for this new generation of Altean colonists. That wouldn’t be for quite some time, and what was she supposed to do with the stone in the meantime? Lock it away? Hide away this beautiful blue jewel, which was meant to represent the vast oceans of her world? Which was meant to inspire those who viewed it with the beauty of life that came forth from the water?

No. To truly honor it, and its purpose, she would do exactly what her father had done. She would gift it, with the understanding that some day it would return to bless a new Altean home world with the spirit of the ancestors lost to the old. And while it was away, it would be in the possession of someone she knew would cherish and care for it the way it should be.

It had been a little bit awkward, hunting Adam down the next day to explain to him the gem’s real significance. She had been doing her best not to make him feel bad, which of course was exactly how he’d felt when he found out what he had, and he’d immediately offered to call the jeweler and have the stone returned. It had taken some convincing to get him to keep it, and to make him understand that the stones were _meant_ to be shared. That giving it to Shiro as a wedding present wouldn’t just be a show of Adam’s love for him, but of Allura’s as well.

“I think he’ll love it,” Allura smiled, closing Adam’s fingers over the watch again. “You’ve found him again after lifetimes apart, and this is a link to the past you can both share.”

Adam nodded and carefully put the watch back into the box the jeweler had sent it in, closing it up tight and tucking it away in a pocket.

“I think he’ll like the idea that when the colonists finally finish terraforming their planet and you all settle in, he’ll be the one who gets to bring you back this little piece of old Altea to Christen it.”

“I wouldn’t ask for it back so soon,” Allura protested. “He should take it as a wedding gift first and foremost.”

“I think you underestimate how much he loves you,” Adam disagreed. “He wants you to be happy, that will be worth more to him than having a shiny accessory.”

Allura didn’t know what to say to that, but before she had to say anything Adam was called away by one of the engineers. He excused himself and headed across the hangar, leaving her to continue to wherever she’d been going when he’d stopped her a few minutes ago.

Except she hadn’t really been going anywhere, she’d just been wandering. Her thoughts were all over the place as she continued to digest all of the new information they’d uncovered in the last few weeks, her brain little more than a bubbling pool of uncertainty.

They had gone from having an overpowered druidess as their biggest enemy to some kind of creature so unfathomable that even three gods and a city full of bonded Quintessi hadn’t been able to stand against it. The more she thought about it the more frightening it became, because the more certain she grew that doom was on the horizon.

If they wanted to survive they had to get into shape to storm Oriande, and hopefully be able to drive back Honerva for long enough to rescue the children she intended to sacrifice. They had to escape in one piece and then find their way to Silador, an eternal city of immortals, and find a way to cleanse it of the dark creatures that had taken it over. Then, as if all of that wasn’t difficult enough, they had to lure Honerva to Silador and lock her away in the crystal prison there, and then hope they’d done enough for the gods to show their faces and start picking up the slack.

It was a tall order. Painfully tall. Most of them were not going to live through this, Allura knew that deep in her heart, and it made every minute feel that much heavier.

She slowed to a stop when she saw a familiar face moving through the crowd and breaking away to go down the stairs into the labs.

Allura glanced around then followed Nikolaev, keeping her distance so she didn’t startle him. He wasn’t doing anything suspicious, he was allowed to be down here to help study the psyferite alloy that made up the Komar mechs, but he had proven to be a very jumpy man. Not that she could blame him, after the things he’d been through he had every right to constantly be nervous.

He was halfway down the hall when she reached the bottom of the stairs, quietly following along behind him as he headed for one of the labs. He was wearing safety gloves and goggles and carrying a metal cannister, which he took into the lab and placed on a table next to several things he must have already been working on.

Allura left him alone for a few minutes, watching him carefully open the tube and take out one of the Nocturline crystals, laying it out on the table and studying it beside some printouts he had. He occasionally made some notes on a clipboard, or moved the crystal over to hold it under the magnifying glass and microscope he had handy. Eventually, Allura grew tired of standing around and gently knocked on the door.

“May I come in?” She asked when he looked up.

“Door’s open,” Nikolaev answered, pulling off the gloves and goggles he was wearing and looking a little bit embarrassed. “Don’t think I’m stupid, okay? I know they’re safe, it’s just a habit in my line of work.”

“You’re a chemical engineer,” Allura remembered, making her way over to lean against the table. She glanced over the things that were lain out, tilting her head a little to look at his notes. “You’re trying to recreate the crystals with Earth elements? Is that possible?”

“Have you heard of diamonds?” Nikolaev asked.

“I think…they’re a pretty gemstone native to this planet,” Allura thought she recalled. “Adam’s ring has one.”

“Yeah, back when they were at the height of popularity, most of them weren’t ethically sourced,” Nikolaev answered. “Mines where they were dug were inhumane at best, and even though they were technically abundant the supply of them was strangled to create the illusion of scarcity. Because they shine so bright and are so clear and pretty, it wasn’t hard to convince people they were very valuable…they stayed popular even when they got the label “blood diamonds” or “conflict diamonds” from all the warring and killing that went on over them. The diamond trade contributed pretty extensively to the circumstances that led up to World War III.”

He took the crystal and a small tool he had, and very carefully scraped the tiniest little piece from the crystal itself into a plastic dish.

“Diamonds take time and pressure…so much time and pressure. They start out as carbon and get compressed over billions of years until they crystalize. But today, Earth doesn’t mine diamonds anymore except for one mine in Russia that provides seeds for us to grow the stones in a lab. We take a small slice of diamond, like this, and then we recreate the conditions in a controlled lab until we create a new diamond. Lab diamonds do have some metallic components that natural diamonds don’t, but nobody really cares. To the naked eye they’re indistinguishable, and the uses are the same.”

Allura took the little dish, looking at the tiny sliver of crystal. It shimmered just as brightly as the rest of the stone did, and she had to admit that her interest was piqued.

“Have you found any promise in lab-created Nocturline crystals?” She wondered. “We assumed the crystals channeled quintessence because of _how _they were formed, is it possible they do it simply because of what they’re made of?”

“That…I’m still figuring out,” Nikolaev admitted. “But I’m leaning toward that it’s a little bit of both. They form naturally in the quintessence field apparently, consider that the “natural diamonds.” Then consider the crystals that were created here through the bondings and the destruction of your ship as the lab-created ones. Obviously it can be done, we just don’t want to go around blowing up a ship with a teludav every time we want one.”

He went about preparing the little sliver to go under the higher powered microscope. Allura watched him work, the seriousness with which he stared at everything, as if blinking too much might make him lose his train of thought. She waited until he had finished a third slide before she interrupted, clearing her throat before he could start on a fourth.

“I didn’t really come down here to bother you about your work,” she admitted. “I came down to apologize.”

“Uh oh,” Nikolaev raised his eyebrows. “What for? What’s broken?”

“No! Nothing like that!” Allura protested. “But Shiro told us about where you came from, the universe you were born in. I saw that universe firsthand, and the horror and damage I caused there. I never thought I’d meet someone who suffered under that oppression, and I can only imagine what having to work with me must be like. The pain this universe has gone through under the Galra, I’m so very sorry you had to go through that because of me.”

Nikolaev raised his eyebrows again, slowly putting down the plastic dish he’d picked up. He let out a little huff, sliding it over next to the others.

“Do you know how big the sum total of space is that encompasses all of the millions of universes in our cluster?” He asked.

Allura hadn’t been expecting that kind of question. It brought her up short as she tried to process what he was asking.

“…big?” She guessed. “Theory says that since universes are always expanding and some are older than others, that some are also larger than others. Without knowing the exact size at any given time, it would be difficult to calculate.”

“No, you’re right on the first guess,” Nikolaev assured her. “It’s big. Really big. And do you have any idea how many combinations of quantum states can be formed just given the mass of an average person?”

“I…no,” Allura frowned.

“A lot,” Nikolaev answered, picking up his pen. He leaned against the table and flipped over the top sheet on his clipboard so he could write. “Ten to the ten to the seventy. 10^10^70. That’s not even a googolplex.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” Allura admitted. “You’re using words and numbers I don’t understand.”

“Sorry,” Nikolaev looked genuinely apologetic. “To put it simpler: all of the universes put together are very, very big. And you’re right, they’re constantly expanding…some live longer lives, some live shorter, there is no calculating the real size. It’s just…very big. For all intents and purposes, it’s infinite. But there’s only a comparably small, set number of states each particle in all of the universes can take.

“The universes are the numbers from zero to infinity, all lined up in a row. You, personally, are the number combination 4-8-3-7-2. Because there are only so many number combinations that can be used to create this infinite series of numbers, eventually 48372 will repeat. It will show up multiple times, in multiple different places.”

“There will be other versions of me in other universes, simply because the elements that make my body will eventually be forced to repeat,” Allura deduced.

“Bingo,” Nikolaev snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “That’s it, that’s the secret behind parallel universes. There’s no divine meaning to one person existing in many different universes, it’s just a constraint of life and creation. But the soul that lives in your body? That’s one of a kind. There’s only one core that’s you, and that’s the person you are. The Allura that did all those things in my timeline, that’s not you. She looked like you and sounded like you, and she was gifted like you because that’s how the numbers played out, but she was a different woman.

“The Honerva that’s frozen in cryo back in my home universe? Totally different woman than the one here. Different core, different soul. Different values, different beliefs. But all universes are born in about the same way, so there are a lot of similarities in things like environment and upbringing. Long story short…you have nothing to apologize for. You scared me when I first arrived because I didn’t know what kind of person you were in this reality, but I know you now. Sort of. You’re not the woman who terrorized an entire universe.”

“You speak like you’ve seen Honerva and this other version of me,” Allura frowned slightly. “Were you in that universe during the time of their reign?”

“I was,” Nikolaev nodded. “I was a guard Captain on Daibazaal, I served the royal family. Honerva was a very kind woman there, very down-to-earth and loved by the people. She was a loving wife and mother and a very skilled alchemist. She was good friends with King Alfor, which was how she’d met Emperor Zarkon in the first place. Unfortunately, Princess Allura was very young when an alchemical experiment went wrong and King Alfor was killed. He was working with Empress Honerva at the time, she survived and he didn’t. Queen Melenor had already passed away about five decaphoebs previous…she was the warrior in that timeline, not Alfor. Allura became a child queen who fell victim to the whispers of corrupt advisors, it set her on the wrong path and she became a very cruel and vain woman.”

“You were there when she invaded,” Allura realized. “You saw the fall of Daibazaal.”

“I imagine it was probably similar to what you went through with Altea,” Nikolaev confirmed. “So I’m very sorry for your loss. The difference was that I was killed in the invasion, I fell trying to protect a young Lotor. I wasn’t really around for the worst of it, I went through two lifetimes after that where it was mostly just memory and history. I had living families that raised me, life was hard but I had people I loved. The Alteans always eventually hunted me down and killed me, but what are you gonna do?”

So blithe with such a light tone, but Allura could see in his eyes that it wasn’t really so easily brushed off. Even for an immortal, even knowing that everything was a cycle and nothing really mattered, to love people and lose them was undoubtedly painful. To live in constant fear, waiting for those that preyed on you to finally die off with time, was unquestionably terrible.

“It’s fine.”

Nikolaev was a little more observant than she had given him credit for. She was being careful not to show it, but he could see her unhappiness.

“Really, it is,” he insisted. “Life has pain in it. It has loss. But the only reason it has those things is because without them, love and beauty wouldn’t be anywhere near as precious or powerful. I had families, I had friends. Their lives mean something, even thousands of years after they’ve been forgotten, because I loved them. They loved me. Someday, if existence can be saved, they’ll find their other halves and bond and find their way to Silador. And when they do, I’ll be able to love them again. Forever, this time.”

He gave her a little smile, and that was when Allura realized her eyes were starting to sting.

Nikolaev wasn’t wrong. Those she had lost were here again, surrounding her, loving her just as much now as they had in lifetimes before. Maybe they had different faces, but their hearts were still the same. And what a beautiful, wonderful thought, that someday they would all be able to find their way to a place of immortal permanence and never feel loss again.

That was what this war was about, she knew now. It wasn’t about founding a new Altea or dismantling the Galra empire. It wasn’t a fight for lives, it was now a fight for souls. It was a fight they had to win, no matter what the cost, because it was a fight they simply could not lose.

It was now a fight for _forever._


	25. Chapter 25

The smooth expanse of Arus’ northern sea shimmered in the morning light like diamonds spilled across a faceted sheet of glass. Unearthly, and not simply because it wasn’t of Earth but because the waters of this temperate little planet were infused with a native mineral akin to salt but not quite the same.

Arus had no tilt and no seasons, it was ever-spring in the seaside cliffs, and this span of the continent edge was perfectly placed between topographical features to receive only the mildest of weather. It was no coincidence that the Castle of Lions had been hidden here, or that the area had already been home to one of the planet’s native populations when it had arrived.

Most species shunned the planet because if it’s simplicity. It had no important resources, didn’t contribute to new technology, and its inhabitants had only begun to use electricity in the last fifty years or so. The Arusians preferred smaller towns under direct monarchies, shared what they had amongst other nearby kingdoms, and didn’t have a conventional concept of war.

Adam had been introduced to Klaizap, this particular kingdom’s most decorated warrior, and had learned much of this from conversation context. Klaizap’s greatest military accomplishments included chasing the most derriperrins (an Arusian, raccoon-like animal) away from the songberry bushes in a single year, breaking up the most arguments over the lifetime of his tenure so far, and pelting a very rude traveler from a nearby kingdom with tomato-like vegetables after said guest had called the town baker’s signature pastry “stinky.”

But the act that had apparently cemented this little warrior in Arusian legend for thousands of years to come was his brave investigation of the Goddess Castle when it had been activated by the Blue Lion’s arrival. These were the extent of warfare amongst the Arusians, a peaceful people who were very small in both stature and influence and were not used to being considered important.

But ten thousand years ago, Queen Melenor had sealed the Castle of Lions on her way out the door and taken the Blue Lion with Merla to hide it at the farthest ends of the universe. Her last request on this planet had been for the local kingdom to stand vigil over the castle and the two sleeping residents within, and the kind residents had complied. Over time the story had been lost or twisted of course, as often happened; Melenor, rather than the pilot of a lion-shaped ship, became remembered as a goddess who had commanded a giant lion. Instead of leaving the planet, stories began to conflate her with Allura, claiming she was the one who slept within the Castle walls.

In the end it didn’t matter though, the Arusians had done their duty. Whether they had kept an eye on the Castle because the original residents had been told the universe was dangerous and this was their last defense, or because the current residents believed their goddess lay within, they had left it unaccosted and protected it from the curious nosiness of other Arusian kingdoms. They had assured that Allura remained asleep, that the Castle wasn’t investigated by the numerous off-world visitors that had undoubtedly landed here over ten millennia, and that all remained hidden until Blue had returned.

The Arusians and their steadfast dedication to their accepted duty were the foundation for the Coalition that had been built today. They were the butterfly that had flapped its wings and caused the eventual hurricane. If the Castle of Lions hadn’t been intact, or if Allura had been woken sooner and lived her life before the current time, nobody would have understood what to do when they arrived. With no wormhole capabilities, the five Earthling pilots would have been stranded here until the Galra tracked Blue. They might have escaped from the Blue Lion and been pulled into a war, and Blue would have eventually pushed them toward the knowledge of the other Lions and Voltron, but the Coalition would have been weak.

And even if everything else had played out, if the Paladins had found the other Lions and formed Voltron with only Blue’s help to start, in the end Adam wouldn’t be standing here. Because Takashi would have died, passed away in the fight with Zarkon’s lich. Even if Black had saved him, he would still be dead. He would have only lasted until Black decayed, and then he would have been released back out into the ether.

“Are you okay?”

Takashi’s voice was gentle as he put an arm around Adam, hinting that he already had some idea of the answer. Adam wouldn’t go so far as to call Blue a snitch, but he didn’t doubt she did share the occasional warning about his mental state. All of the Guardians probably did that on behalf of their Paladins, they saw the White as a leader of sorts and that meant that they now saw Takashi in that same light.

“Minor episode,” Adam answered, knowing it was pointless to lie. “I think it’s the comparison between here and Earth. This is what home used to be, now it’s a barely-rebuilding ruin. I’m glad the Arusians guarded the Castle for so long, but I can’t help but wonder why their reward for doing practically nothing is paradise while the people who are out there fighting get nothing but to wonder if the next battle will leave them dead.”

That was unfair. Logically he knew that. But sometimes his brain went down paths he didn’t want it to, and he just wasn’t okay enough yet to stop it.

“Because the Galra warlords didn’t even see them as people,” Takashi answered his question even though he didn’t really need an answer. “They saw the Arusians as undeveloped animals living on a useless planet in an inconvenient location. The people who are out their fighting are the people they knew would eventually be a threat.”

So little had changed about Takashi—including his inability to read the room half the time—that Adam had trouble remembering he was supposedly also a great and powerful immortal being. His intelligence hadn’t increased and his dumbassery hadn’t decreased, he was now just a man who knew more than mortals should know yet only really remembered any of it when he really thought about it.

Curtis was the same. The only difference with him was that his return to health had dulled the sharp edge he had developed over the last few years, returning him also to the sweeter disposition he’d had during their youth. Again, no smarter. He just knew more things.

Adam could have simply pretended they’d both gone off and attended the same Space College to pick up some advanced academics they hadn’t known before, and nothing would be different. Their newfound abilities with Alchemy and Druidism respectively rarely came up in everyday life and were easy to ignore.

Kuro, however, was Kuro. He hadn’t grown up on Earth and didn’t really vibe with human cultures, he used his abilities far more liberally in the absence of learned human coping mechanisms.

In short, Kuro caused problems on purpose while Takashi and Curtis merely stood back and egged him on. However the three of them were grappling internally with the changes over the last weeks, outwardly they were all the same.

“I didn’t need an answer,” Adam sighed, resting his head on Takashi’s shoulder. “I was just telling you what I was thinking.”

“I think it’s the wedding,” Takashi frowned, lightly squeezing the back of Adam’s neck. “Will you be able to do this? Most of the guests don’t understand the process, we can do something about it.”

“In three minutes?” Adam scoffed. “Babe, we’re literally about to walk down the aisle, when it comes to making changes that ship has sailed.”

“No it hasn’t. I’ll call off the whole thing if I have to,” Takashi said sincerely.

He would, too. Adam didn’t doubt Takashi would do whatever he had to do to make him happy, even if it meant canceling the day’s main event.

He felt a warm pang of happiness spread through his chest. Takashi was the only person in his life who had ever had only his best interests in mind.

“You’re not going to call it off,” Adam answered, kissing him on the cheek before stepping away to make sure his suit and tie were neat. As tempting as just not going out there was, this was important. Adam loved Takashi enough to bear it. “It’s half an hour, tops…I’ll survive. If I pass out just put an arm around me and prop me up with my back to everyone, pretend I’m conscious.”

“Hey, are you guys ready?” Keith called from over by the tent where those taking part in the wedding were waiting for it to start. “The wedding party’s starting to line up!”

“Here goes nothing,” Adam breathed, squeezing Takashi’s hand. “Let’s get this over with.”

“You can do it,” Takashi encouraged, squeezing his hand in return. “It’s just walking down an aisle, repeating some words, and walking back out. Once the reception starts you can spend most of it hiding.”

“Oh, hiding from everyone,” Adam murmured as they reached the tent, heading inside. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

The wedding party was large, in keeping with the grandeur of the event. Fourteen, including the two grooms, with Keith, Hunk, Pidge, and Allura joining Kuro and Matt on Takashi’s side. Curtis and Lance were on Adam’s, along with Griffin, Gail, Raina, and Sarah. They all wore white suits with a vest and tie to match their armor colors, while the Garrison-affiliated members had chosen their own colors. It made for an interesting rainbow effect, flanking the grooms who were dressed in gray suits with Takashi wearing a black vest and tie and Adam wearing lavender.

Takashi had picked it all. Adam had heard the sentence “we need to choose colors” and immediately decided he was now colorblind. He just needed to be pointed to where his suit was when it was time to put it on, the rest of this three-ring circus was Takashi’s to handle.

Music started outside, and the wedding party started lining up. Adam watched it all with a detached sort of feeling, knowing the next half hour or so was going to be his own personal hell. All those strangers staring at him, people he’d never met and couldn’t identify, allies he’d never even heard of. This was going to be the first time any of them even saw the Blue Lion’s new pilot, he had no idea what expectations anybody had or if he was going to live up to them.

The ceremony itself was neither here nor there, aliens weren’t going to understand an Earth wedding either way. The guests were here because being invited to this was the equivalent to getting to sit at the cool kids’ table for a day. They were getting to meet the Voltron Paladins, not just quickly in passing but for a day of actual interaction. Their planets would get to flout the fact that they’d sent representatives today for months, the people who were here would get to put this on their political resumes for the rest of their lives.

Adam would probably just get to remember this as the day he threw up in front of every important government official in the galaxy.

“If you squeeze any harder you’re going to break my fingers,” Takashi warned softly, nudging him lightly with the arm attached to the hand Adam was crushing the life out of. “I only have one real hand left.”

“Sorry,” Adam whispered, forcing himself to loosen his hold as Hunk and Sarah stepped through the curtain doorway at the other side of the tent to begin the walk down the aisle. He took a deep breath. “How many Galra are here?”

“Only six,” Takashi murmured. “Lotor and three Imperial advisors, Lotor has them sitting to the far right where you won’t really see them. Then Kolivan and Krolia, they’re staying toward the back. There will be a bigger delegation at the reception, but you’ll only have to be introduced real quick and then you can go.”

It was the one demand Adam had given for this event, and he didn’t feel guilty about giving it: for the sake of peace the Galra had been invited to send Imperial representatives, and a small handful of course had to be invited to the ceremony, but Adam refused to let them be too close to the altar. He had suffered too much at their hands to trust any of them, and the damage was simply too fresh for him to just suck it up.

As beloved as Kolivan and Krolia might be to the others, Adam didn’t want them anywhere near him either if there was any alternative. They were both a little too “the ends justify the means” for him to believe they cared about any species besides their own as anything more than tools in the fight against their own personal oppression. He’d believe otherwise when they actually did something to prove it.

Pidge and Gail stepped out next, then a few beats later Allura and Raina.

“How many is in the bigger delegation?” Adam pressed.

Griffin and Matt stepped out of the tent.

“About twenty.”

“Great.”

Lance glanced back and gave the remaining members of the wedding party a thumbs up and a grin before dramatically throwing open the tent curtain and stepping out with Kuro.

“It gets better.”

“It gets better,” Adam repeated, feeling every muscle in his body tense. Takashi never really meant that something was better when he said that, he usually meant a defibrillator might be needed after Adam hit the floor. “It doesn’t get better, better would be if you told me The Monster Squad was finally getting a decent remake. I’m at least ninety percent sure you’re not telling me that. What is it?”

Curtis and Keith looked back at them, as unaware as the others of their whispering thanks to the music outside the tent.

“Breathe,” Curtis reminded him. Keith took his cue from Lance and gave them a thumbs up, then the two best men stepped out of the tent.

“Know how weird wrestling fans can get?” Takashi asked.

“I don’t know what that has to do with anything, and that scares me,” Adam murmured.

“A guy in the Galra delegation had to be asked to take off the Cozakul hat he was wearing,” Takashi revealed, keeping his gaze straight ahead. “You have merchandise and some kind of indie cult following. They don’t really know what weddings are, he thought he was being respectful.”

“I have to sit down,” Adam said immediately, starting to lower himself to the grass.

“Nope, not the time,” Takashi warned, catching him around the middle and stopping him halfway down. “Come on, we have to go.”

“Perfect time, I need to sit,” Adam protested. “Just leave me here with my head between my knees, go get fake-married to the officiant. And then I want a real divorce, I can’t believe you waited until the last minute to warn me.”

“I love you,” Takashi wheedled. “I love you _so _much. But this is why I had to say things you don’t like this way, if I told you earlier you’d still be hiding in Blue and if I waited you might end up blindsided by one of them saying something at the reception.”

“I’m nauseous,” Adam complained, letting himself be pulled back to his feet. “And thirsty, and kind of hungry, and I want to be home in my underwear streaming old movies instead of here saying vows with the man who _betrayed_ me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“A hat,” Adam fumed quietly. “A _hat_. Who the hell even makes shit like that?”

“This guy who runs a store at the space mall called _It’s Earth_ and apparently has his fingers on the pulse of the dead 1990’s entertainment culture,” Takashi replied. “He sold the kids a cow once.”

The music outside changed, signaling that all of the wedding party and reached the end of the aisle. It was time.

“Yeah, I’m just going to sit here for a minute,” Adam breathed.

“You’ll be fine, let’s go.”

“No, I’m dying,” Adam insisted. “Just give me a minute to finish and then drag my corpse along with you.”

“_Klaizap_ could walk down that aisle,” Takashi prodded. “And his biggest military honor is that he chased away five racoons once.”

“You’re such a little shit,” Adam hissed, feeling the sting he knew Takashi had intended with that barb. “I hope you know you just earned every horrible thing that’s going to happen to you in your sleep over the next month.”

Takashi turned to face him, taking both of his hands. He leaned in and kissed him gently, resting their foreheads together.

“You can do this,” he said softly. “I know you don’t want to, and I know how lucky I am that you’re willing to go through it for me. Just walk, look straight ahead until we get to the end, and it will be over before you even know it. You can even break my hand if you really need to.”

Adam sighed heavily, leaning into him.

“I’ll never understand how you can want things like this,” he admitted. “I’m never going to understand how you can enjoy all the attention and the spotlight. But yeah, I can do this…it’s only half an hour.”

The music hit the point where there was no going back. Takashi reached for the curtain and paused, looking back to him for confirmation. When Adam took another deep breath and nodded he pulled it aside, taking Adam’s hand and stepping out into the fresh, open air.

As far as weddings went, there was no place in the universe more beautiful to hold one than here. Here, where the elegant marble bridge built by previous generations of Arusians had once led to the gates of the Castle of Lions, the great ship’s absence leaving it to jut out into the sparkling sea. The constant movement of damp, mineral-laden air had worn some spots smooth, leaving the surface looking almost like opaque ocean glass, and the water swirling around the bridge’s supports sang a soothing song of sea crashing against rock directly under their feet.

The bridge was wide enough to serve as the venue for the actual ceremony, but narrow enough that shorter rows spanned almost its entire length. Adam looked past everyone, keeping his eyes glued solidly on Lance and Curtis. They were both aware that would be his way of coping so they wouldn’t be confused at his staring, and he was glad he did at least have something to focus on.

The music faded to a faint ringing in his ears and he felt Takashi’s grip on his hand tighten slightly when his fingers started trembling. Adam didn’t have to look around to know people were looking at him in interest, getting their first look at this new Paladin who hadn’t been around for any of the war so far. He didn’t know if he was exactly what some of them expected or a disappointment.

Well, that wasn’t true. Thanks to Takashi cluing him in, he thought he knew what some of the whispers coming from where the Lotor would be sitting with his Galra advisors were saying.

Adam didn’t know how he made it to the altar. At some point he went on autopilot, putting one foot in front of the other until he stopped disassociating to find himself at the end of his journey.

He didn’t know the officiant, only that she worked for the State of New Mexico and wasn’t Garrison affiliated or religious. She was definitely a skilled speaker, very confident with a voice that carried, and although she held a book that probably listed prompts she never had to look down at it.

They were not doing anything more than the standard vows. Both Adam and Takashi agreed that making this any fancier than it had to be would cheapen the little wedding they’d had at their own house, they stuck to the basics here since this was mostly for show anyway. In fact, the ceremony probably would have lasted less than ten minutes if they hadn’t arranged for the officiant to address the crowd. It was mostly meant to kill some time and draw it out a bit, but she very skillfully wove a vibrant story about what marriage was to humans for the benefit of the non-Earth guests.

Adam dutifully recited his vows, barely listening to them and not hearing at all what came back out of his own mouth. He just assumed he got it right from the fact that nobody corrected him, and then Takashi took his turn.

Keith and Curtis passed them the rings, with Keith dropping the one he held. Adam heard Takashi tell him it was all right when he scurried after it and apologized, and personally he didn’t care. It didn’t get lost, it didn’t get broken, it was fine.

The officiant got to the part where she asked if anyone had any objections, at which point Takashi vehemently motioned for her to steamroll right through that one, undoubtedly nervous because Janet, Simon, and Enzo were here. After that, Adam had requested that the customary kiss be removed, unwilling to do so in front of so many strangers. Instead they had decided to light a unity candle, just because it was pretty and took a few minutes.

Besides, most of the people here had no idea what was going on to call them out anyway.

Adam judged the whole thing to have lasted just shy of half an hour, and let out a quiet sigh of relief when the officiant presented them to the guests as a married couple. Takashi took his hand again, leading him back down the aisle. Adam didn’t need much help this time, when it came to getting out of here his legs were pretty much ready to go.

“Your family has behaved all morning,” Takashi murmured as they reached the end of the rows of chairs, stepping back into the tent where they could have a few minutes before photographs. “Did you hypnotize them all?”

“No, that doesn’t work on people related by blood,” Adam admitted. “I wish I could make them act the way I want, but I can’t. Well, Enzo maybe, but not the rest of them. But I don’t need to do anything to him…apparently he’s attending a seminary and finishing his last couple years of study before becoming a priest.”

Adam could see the flash of pain-like confusion dance across Takashi’s face for a moment. Which was understandable…Enzo had been an arrogant, drug-abusing attention whore for most of their lives, the fact that he would join the priesthood was quite the turnaround. The fact that he’d made those life changes before the Galra invasion and hadn’t had his eyes forcefully opened to the world by the attack was even more impressive.

He put his arms around Takashi’s neck and leaned against him heavily, going full dead-weight as Takashi held him up with only one arm with an almost annoying ease. Adam hugged him tightly, glad the main ordeal was over as the wedding party filed in behind them. The guests would start to be ushered off the bridge now, past the tent here and a short walk down the hill to where the Arusians had helped prepare a pretty reception setup in the middle of their town.

They would be served cocktails while a photos were taken then the wedding party would all be formally introduced. There would be two speeches, one from each groom’s side, carefully concocted to be both congratulatory of the new couple but also diplomatically flattering to guests. Allura and Curtis were taking care of those, fittingly. Then a toast, the meal, and the couple’s first dance. Finally, after that, there would be the cutting of the cake, and that would officially end all the ceremonial formalities and open the floor for the guests’ fun to start.

All of that would end by early afternoon, leaving the rest of the time for drinking and dancing. The guests would then stay in rooms set up for them on the Atlas, which would remain at berth here for the next three days: two days for meetings and treaties, and one day for a company hired from Earth to help the Arusians clean up the mess.

Takashi pulled Adam to his feet and let him go as two servers came in with flutes of champagne for the party. He handed Adam one and they sank down in the supplied chairs with everyone else, loosening ties and adjusting jackets and preparing for the next leg of the event.

* * * * * * * * * *

The worst was over, psychologically speaking. The ceremony guests were off joining the much larger crowd at the reception location, leaving the fourteen members of the wedding party in relative quiet. They had about twenty minutes to themselves before someone came to tell them the altar and first several rows of chairs had been removed and the bridge was open for photos.

That was their cue to head back out to go meet the photographer, which Keith did grudgingly. He and Adam didn’t agree on much but neither of them particularly liked any of this showboating. He tolerated it quietly as a necessary evil, letting himself be marched out with the others and positioned for the photographer, holding his breath and silently counting the seconds as they turned into minutes.

His chest hurt. Not on the surface, but deep down in his heart and lungs. It was a battle in and of itself to keep the urge to cough at bay, and what had started that morning as an annoying pang was now making it difficult to stand.

He’d thought for sure his pretense would be called out after he’d fumbled and dropped the ring, but luckily Lance was standing on the other side of the couple and Shiro had just chalked it up to nerves.

It was frustrating, because there was nothing he could do for it. Numerous scans and examinations had found nothing wrong with him physically, nothing that could be treated with conventional methods. He’d even tried one of the Atlas’ healing pods a few nights ago, when nobody was around, with no results.

Keith remained quiet and mostly disinterested throughout the photos as they dragged on. None of these would be particularly touching memories for the happy couple, they were going to be released for magazines and newspapers. After those were done, everyone was asked to briefly change into their armor for some further publicity photos since they were all conveniently here.

The new updates to the armor had been completed, so Adam was willing to wear it at least. Keith had to admit that while the changes gave up a little bit of maneuverability the returns they got on protection were worth it. He’d been stabbed enough times that having his abdomen covered was a gift, and some of the weaker points in the joints were now covered and reinforced. With helmets on, their bodies were now fully protected.

He finished putting on his wrist guards, the final piece, and glanced over to where Lance was holding up a piece of blue fabric.

“It’s a cape,” Keith said helpfully.

“I can see that,” Lance said dryly, lowering it to look over it at him. “When did we get capes?”

“Allura said Altean battle armor had capes,” Keith answered with a shrug, shaking out the folded piece of red fabric he had left on the chair and beginning to clip it on.

“It’s like the military uniforms,” Pidge answered from where she was helping Hunk clip on his own yellow one. “You have your combat uniform and you have your dress uniform. The cape is for dress occasions, you don’t wear it when you’re actually fighting.”

“Well, they definitely look cool,” Lance allowed, draping his own over his shoulders and holding out one arm. “Very dramatic. Why couldn’t we get these sooner?”

“We didn’t ask,” Hunk pointed out. “And we didn’t exactly have a lot of military formal events before we got back to Earth.”

“Eh,” Lance gave a grunt of semi-agreement, clipping on his cape.

The four of them filed back out to be lined up again, posed and primped like dolls. At one point a woman caught Keith off guard with a tube of something, dabbing some of it on his face and then slapping the spot with a powder brush before he could stop her. She was gone again quickly and the flashing continued.

They were all photographed separately, then in groups. The five Paladins and Shiro were photographed together, then Shiro was taken to the side with just Allura for some kind of “leadership” spread that Keith had made clear days ago he didn’t want to be in. When that started they were released to get back into their wedding clothes, which didn’t take them very long. The promise of finally getting to go down the hill, where the sounds of music and laughter wafted up to them, made them all move faster.

Allura, Romelle, and Veronica had been suffering at the hands of a different photographer, and were thankfully finished as well. They had to wait about twenty more minutes for Shiro and Allura to finally be let go, but at length everyone was finally back in their suits and once again being marched in lines by the organizers.

“I never knew a wedding was so much like being in second grade,” Pidge whispered back to them from her position at the front. “Get in line. Don’t touch that. Walk here, be quiet, stand up straight, don’t play with that.”

“It’s not really as fun as I thought it would be, no,” Hunk agreed. “But I think that’s just all the ceremony part, it will probably be better at the reception.”

“It better be,” Keith heard Adam grumble from behind him, speaking to Shiro and trying not to be heard by the others. “If one more person tells me to smile I’m setting them on fire.”

There was a rustling noise as the organizers signaled for them to start walking in two lines down the hill to where the wedding party would make their entrance, then:

“…why do you have Goldfish crackers in your suit pocket?”

“Because you turn into the king of the bitches when you’re hungry, and you wouldn’t eat breakfast this morning,” Shiro answered easily.

“That’s offensive. Open this packet for me.”

Keith tripped then. He was fortunate that Kuro and Lance were walking in front of him and Curtis, they both turned at the same time and caught him with an ease that bordered on annoying thanks to their greater strength.

“Are you okay?” Lance asked, the worry he must have been hiding for a while finally leaking out in his voice. “You’ve been off all morning.”

“You’re kind of pale,” Kuro agreed with a frown as Keith got back onto his own feet. “When was the last time you ate or had anything to drink?”

“I’m fine, it’s just been a long day already,” Keith protested, smoothing down his suit jacket. “We were here stupidly early, then all the changing in and out of armor for the pictures…”

“Hey, can we switch up the order?” Adam called over one of the organizers as the group was, embarrassingly, pulled to a complete halt by Keith’s misstep. “Grooms first, then Best Men, then the others? It’s a really warm day and this one should probably get seated faster and have some water.”

“I have to second that,” Kuro spoke before Keith could protest. “We should get him sitting as soon as possible.”

Only the Paladins and Quintessi knew what was wrong with Keith, and they were being kind in playing it off as heat exhaustion or dehydration, but he still hated it. He hated the fact that he was currently the weakest link in the chain, and that he couldn’t even make it through one important day without something needing to be changed for his benefit.

“It can be changed,” the organizer answered, motioning for the people at the back of the lines to start moving to the front. The other organizer went to go tell the announcer that the order of names was switching. “But let’s do it fast, we’re almost there.”

Shiro draped an arm over Keith’s shoulders, leading him up toward the front of the line as he read the frustration on his face.

“It’s fine,” Shiro insisted. “Really. It’s been a long morning, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Keith grumbled bitterly. “That’s all.”

“Hey,” Shiro gave him a nudge. “You’ll get better. We’ll figure out what this is and we’ll get rid of it, but in the meantime there’s no shame in not feeling so great.”

“He’s right,” Curtis chimed in, the other best man coming to take his new place beside him. “Take it from two men who have been sick, sometimes you’re just going to have a bad day. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Keith grumbled again, under his breath this time, as Shiro let him go to fall in next to Adam. He could already hear the man on the microphone introducing the new couple, now using Adam’s official new surname of Shirogane. The two moved quickly ahead to go around the small houses that blocked them from view and enter the square to polite applause.

Everyone had been briefed on basic etiquette, so it wasn’t a raucous standing ovation. Even so it was loud, which hinted to the sheer number of people who were here even before Keith and Curtis heard their names and followed. Curtis moved more slowly than he had in rehearsal, making it easier for Keith to keep up, as they moved past a group of tables and across the large area of the square that was cleared out and decorated for dancing.

There were…a lot of people here. Keith hadn’t been all that excited about the ceremony, but at least for him that was a matter of preference and not fear. For perhaps the first time in his life he actually felt bad for Adam, who he could see as they reached the party table looked kind of pale.

The two grooms had their own small table so they could get up and move around easier, between two larger tables where their groomsmen and groomsmaids would sit. It was separated out by side, but Lance and Kuro would be switching up so that Lance could sit at the “kids table,” as Shiro teasingly called it. Griffin and Matt would be switching so that Matt could sit at the “not pilots table.” Keith sank thankfully into the closest chair at his table, obediently sipping from the water glass that was already there to make the watching adults happy.

Kuro and Lance followed shortly, and perhaps predictably, Kuro was immediately flanked by two young Arusians before their father could stop them. Lance didn’t notice, he was too busy posing and smiling and loving all the attention. They both had to be corralled back onto their path to the tables by wildly waving organizers who had been warned by Shiro but hadn’t seemed to believe him, which was par for the course for them both. Keith rested his chin on his hand as Lance finally made it over and dropped down beside him.

“You really went over there to sign autographs,” Keith noted, amused.

“Hey, Shiro and Adam said I could make any entrance I wanted,” Lance defended. “What am I going to do? Ignore fans? That’s rude.”

“_No_ you can’t keep them!” Keith heard Curtis admonishing Kuro over the next introductions. “Give them back to their parents!”

The others filtered in, much more well-behaved. Matt, Gail, Raina, and Sarah settled at the table with Kuro and Curtis, while Hunk, Pidge, Allura, and Griffin took seats around theirs. As the grand entrance wound down, Allura rose to give the first speech. She left the table, going to stand in front of the one where Adam and Shiro currently sat. When she was there, and everyone’s attention was on her, Keith felt Lance grip his arm and give him a tug.

He glanced over and started to mouth “what,” but then saw his boyfriend was getting to his feet and signaling for him to follow. Keith glanced around to make sure nobody was looking and did so, quietly leaving the group to go a few yards to slip behind one of the small houses.

“How bad is it?” Lance asked, cutting right to the chase before Keith could even ask what he wanted. Any pretense of not knowing what was going on was gone, and Keith could tell he wouldn’t get far with lies.

“It just aches,” he admitted, loosening his tie slightly and lightly rubbing his chest over his heart. “Same as always.”

“Same as always,” Lance repeated. “That’s why your breathing is shallow and you almost passed out twice? Because it’s the same as always?”

There was a hard edge to Lance’s voice that wasn’t normally there. He was a guy who got frustrated or irritated, but Keith didn’t think he’d ever seen Lance actually get angry. It wasn’t exactly a frightening change, but it was unusual enough to be a surprise.

“It’s only…” Keith tried to come up with an acceptable response but didn’t have one. At least, not one Lance wouldn’t see through. “Fine. It hurts, okay? It hurts a lot, and it doesn’t exactly have me in a cheery, talkative mood.”

Lance’s usual answer would have been to get louder, maybe throw in some wild gestures, and tell him he was stupid. But just like Lance didn’t usually get angry, he also didn’t give his usual kind of answer. Instead he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, pressing his fingers against his temples as if he was developing a headache.

“I’m sick of this,” when he spoke it was through practically clenched teeth, and he still kept his voice low to keep the conversation private. “How old are you, Keith? Twelve? I’m not exactly the most mature person in the world, but when are you going to grow up at least a little bit and start acting like you’re part of the group when there’s _not_ a life or death emergency?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said!” Lance returned. “If we’re under attack or we’re headed into a fight or there’s some horrible fate awaiting us within the next few hours, suddenly you’re alive and there and acting like a real human being, but if there isn’t then you’re just…there! You back off, you wait for everyone to come to you, you barely interact unless somebody else starts it. When I was off causing all hell across the galaxy you were right on my ass every chance you got, now that it’s quiet you sit at home doing your own thing while I schedule my life around showing up on your doorstep.”

“I do not!” Keith protested. He tried to think of a point time outside of an emergency when he had gone to Lance, but he couldn’t come up with anything and that made him feel even more attacked. “You still live with your parents, you want me to just show up on _your_ doorstep?”

“That was an example!” Lance groaned. “If there’s no battle to fight, you just shut down and let the rest of us do the emotional lifting, and this? This is exactly what I mean!”

He poked Keith in the chest to emphasize his point.

“I can help you with this. Allura and Shiro can help you with this. Lotor can point you to any one of five-hundred Alteans at any given time who can help you with this, and you refuse to come and ask for help. And I’m not an idiot, I know you won’t ask any of them because you know I’d find out, so why do you not come to me? Do you still not trust me?”

Lance had a habit of picking up speed as he spoke, until he got to the point where it was impossible to get a word in edgewise. This was one such case, but even if Keith had an opening to say something he wouldn’t have. The turn that the conversation took was not one he’d expected.

“Wait, no, that’s not—”

“Because I get it!” Lance cut him off, still on full steam ahead. “I messed up big time, whether it was completely my own fault or not. And it’s still going to take a lot of time and work on my part to fix it, I know that. So if you don’t trust me to use alchemy on you, it’s fine! But don’t keep doing this stupid thing where you keep all your problems to yourself because you won’t ask anyone else for help either.

“Lance…”

“I can’t believe I still have to complain about you doing things first then considering the consequences later!” He was on a roll and he wasn’t slowing down. “Except this time the person you’re stabbing before questioning is yourself, and by the time the rest of us get around to finding out something’s really wrong, you’ll be _dead_!”

Keith reached up and put a hand over Lance’s mouth, which he immediately regretted when he saw the furious look in his eyes. He tried to talk quickly, before Lance decided to bite him.

“You’re really worried about me, aren’t you?” Keith realized.

It was a sobering thought, because he wasn’t used to having people worry about him. Shiro did, of course, and so did his mother, but they’d been more hands-off and just trusted he knew what he was doing in being responsible for himself. This pivot away from being the outsider in most respects, which he had been right up until a few months ago, was proving to be more difficult than he’d anticipated.

“Of course I’m worried about you!” Lance hissed, pulling back away from Keith’s hand. “You could have died, now you’re hiding how bad off you are, how can I not be worried?”

“I’m sorry,” Keith held up both hands, trying to calm Lance down before someone noticed they were gone. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean for it to go this far, but I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Everyone already _knows_,” Lance was sinking from anger down into the more normal level of frustration. “People were there, it’s not like everyone spontaneously forgot!”

“Lance,” Keith kept his voice down, trying to get Lance to follow his lead. “Why did you keep it to yourself that you were sick back when you were having nosebleeds and passing out?”

“That’s different! I was at least still seeing doctors!”

“Why did you keep it to yourself?” Keith repeated.

“Because everyone would’ve been down my throat about it!” Lance exclaimed. “You’d stop letting me pilot, I wouldn’t be able to be a Paladin anym—! …oh.”

It couldn’t have been more obvious the second Lance made the connection if there had been an audible click. Everything from his voice to his expression to his posture changed on a dime.

“Yeah, oh,” Keith agreed. “I already don’t have a Lion anymore, and even when we get Pidge back into the Green Lion we still don’t know if I can pilot Black without a Guardian to do the alchemy that most of the weapons and maneuvers need. All I have left to offer is physical combat, if I get sidelined because of this, I’m done.”

“You’re not going to get sidelined,” Lance sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Number one, we’re way past the point of being able to afford to sideline anyone. And even if we weren’t, you’re the last person who would be. Even I got moved into an MFE, and you? You can pilot like fifty different kinds of Galra spacecraft, you’re too valuable for them to leave out. They’d prop your half-conscious body up in a cockpit to get you out into a fight if they had to. But you’re not going to have anything left to be put into the fight if you don’t let us try to keep you healthy!”

“Yeah, I guess—”

“And _three_,” Lance interrupted again, this time leaning in close and pointing at Keith warningly. “I’m your significant other, I need to know when something is wrong!”

Keith let his eyes flick briefly down to the finger in his face before looking back at Lance. The words came out before he could help himself.

“What happened to two?”

Lance’s eyes narrowed slightly and the finger got closer to his face.

“Sorry. You’re right, you’re absolutely right,” Keith admitted. “I should’ve come to you guys. But…it’s hard sometimes. I’m used to sucking it up and dealing with things myself, I feel like I’d be dumping something you don’t need on top of everything else. Shiro’s been dealing with this wedding, Hunk’s been handling the bulk of the diplomatic communications with the Galra, Pidge has been working with Green to upgrade the Lions’ programming. Then Allura and Kuro have been helping Lotor treat the sick colonists, and you’ve been through a lot in the last few months. I just don’t want to add anything.”

“That’s the beauty of it, Keith,” Lance said, exasperated, as he reached up to squeeze Keith’s face between both hands. “Everybody has something going on to complain about. When you unload your problems along with the rest of us, it’s called participation! It’s like you actually want to be a real boy! That’s what friends and family do, they listen to your problems and try to help even when they have their own.”

“But—”

“Ah ah ah,” Lance squished Keith’s face tighter, squeezing his cheeks so he found it difficult to talk. “No but. We don’t do but.”

It was on the tip of Keith’s tongue to say something about butts just to be contrary, but he decided against it. Lance loosened his hold slightly.

“Look, I…” Lance faltered, taking a deep breath through his nose. He pursed his lips like he was trying to force something out, squeezing his eyes shut like it was painful. “I lo…, you know, I…”

“Take your time,” Keith said through still-squashed lips. “You can do it, I have faith in you.”

Lance opened his eyes, and the look on his face could have melted steel.

“I’m going to feed you to alligators.”

“Are there alligators on Arus?”

“Keep talking and we’ll find out,” Lance threatened. “Look, you idiot, I love you. No, I’m not saying it again, and don’t let it go to your head. That means that I worry about you, and when you keep secrets like this from me I feel like I did something wrong. We’re supposed to be a team, remember? Even if there’s something big you feel like you have to hide from everyone else, you shouldn’t hide it from me.”

He let go of Keith’s face, dropping his hands down to press them against his chest. A moment later Keith felt the cool sensation of alchemy running across his skin, quickly sinking in deeply to chase away the burning pain that had been threatening to suffocate him. It was like night and day, his lungs suddenly able to fill with air again and the sharp ache fading away to little more than a dull pressure.

Even Keith was surprised by the difference, it had gotten worse so gradually he hadn’t realized just how badly off he was.

Slowly, the cool feeling faded away, leaving only the warmth of Lance’s hands resting against him. Keith reached up to take them both, taking the first deep breath he’d been able to take in at least a day.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, more sincerely this time. “I should’ve told you what was going on. I’m trying to get used to this whole being involved with people thing, I promise I’ll do better.”

“I don’t want you to just try and do better for my sake,” Lance frowned. “I want you to do better for yours. People care about you, whether you’re used to it or not. We’re here to help and take care of each other, and that means you too. But you have to let us.”

Lance leaned in and kissed him briefly, then straightened back up and smoothed down Keith’s now-ruffled shirt.

“You need to tell me when it hurts,” he instructed, taking a step back to signal that the conversation was over for now. “You need to let me fix it. No more gritting your teeth and putting up with it. Until we find the cure for whatever this is, you’re going to let me handle it. Come on, let’s get back out there before they notice we’re gone.”

“Yes, sir,” Keith murmured, reaching out to catch Lance’s hand before he got too far.

He let Lance lead the way, moving slowly back around the house to where Curtis was now giving the second speech so they didn’t draw too much attention. Keith managed to wait until they were about five yards from their seats before he couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“So you love me, huh?”

“Oh…shut up,” Lance grumbled.

“You gonna try to catch the bouquet when they throw it?”

“Yes, I absolutely am. And you’re gonna sit there and be quiet about it.”

Keith chuckled, the newfound relief already having him in better spirits. They sank back down in their seats and he let his head fall to the side, leaning against Lance’s shoulder while they waited for the speeches to end.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Your speech was lovely. But then, I expected nothing less.”

Allura looked up as Lotor leaned against the back of her chair, unable to contain the smile that graced her face. Not only because she valued his opinion and was glad he thought highly of the speech she’d worked so hard on, but because he was just irresistibly adorable with his now-short hair bound up in a Galra-style circlet.

The curls just couldn’t be tamed, not so soon. He’d said the last time his hair was short had been about two and a half thousand decaphoebs ago, and it had taken him several movements to train it into behaving. Even the professional stylist he’d no doubt employed for the day hadn’t been able to completely stop some ends from rebelling.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” she greeted teasingly, glancing down at his attire. Generally he was in armor or casual clothing, this was the first time she’d seen him in royal Galra garb, and she was pleasantly surprised.

She had been expecting to feel a bit of shock, maybe some discomfort. What he wore now had never belonged to Zarkon, it was tailor made for Lotor’s smaller form, but there was a standard for what an emperor wore. Allura had been bracing for the day when she finally saw Lotor wearing those things, for the horrible memories she expected the sight to bring. And it did bring her some sadness…she recognized the clothes as almost exactly the same design as what Zarkon had worn before changing into his armor on the day he’d summoned the four other Paladins to go into the quintessence field.

But the man in the clothes wasn’t Zarkon. He had his problems, Allura was definitely not going to simply excuse Lotor’s sins over the years just because he was sorry for them, but he was a far cry from his father.

And not to be judging Honerva’s obviously questionable taste, but he was quite a bit better looking than his father as well.

“Did your advisors release you?” Allura wondered, glancing around. “Or did you escape?”

“I escaped,” Lotor admitted, smirking slightly. “I’ll have to go back shortly, the last thing I want to do is leave a group of Galra alone amongst the many representatives of people who hate them. With good reason, of course, but this isn’t a day for fighting.”

“How are they taking all of this?” Allura wondered curiously. “Most of the Coalition welcomes the idea of peace, but it’s only because they know that fighting the Empire is a war they may not win and not because they want to be friends. What do the Galra think of how this is playing out?”

Lotor sighed through is nose, crouching down next to her chair instead of looming over her.

“Well, it’s difficult,” he supposed. “Most, if not all, of Zarkon’s old guard loyalists have been removed. The Blade of Marmora has spent a very long time maneuvering trustworthy people into high positions, and it shows. I know Kolivan will deny it completely and say that the Blade was decimated while I was gone, but I also know that’s not entirely true. No Blade who has a mission to steer the Empire in the right direction was going to give themselves away to go running into Macidus’ trap.”

“You think some are still there?” Allura asked, not at all surprised. She didn’t know much about the current command of the Galra, but she knew that people like Thace, Ulaz, and Krolia couldn’t have been the only high-level Marmora planted in the Empire.

“I suspect, but I’ll also make no attempt to find out for sure,” Lotor replied. “Let Kolivan keep his secrets, our end goals are the same. Besides, if anything happens to me, I’d rather not have outed his people. But whether they’re still in the ranks or not, the Blade have definitely had an effect…most of the war hawks split off into factions, of those who remain most genuinely want peace. The vast majority of them are far younger than my father’s court as well. He fed his loyalists on quintessence to extend their lifespans, those who currently serve the throne haven’t been exposed to the same corruption. They are a new generation who have grown up on the lies of the last one but are still malleable enough to accept that what they were taught might have been wrong.”

“And the advisors who are here with you?” Allura murmured, glancing over toward the table where Lotor had been sitting. They were certainly not young.

“Old men and women past their fighting prime,” Lotor replied, following her gaze. “Longing to relive their glory days, but willing to replace the thrill of the fight with the thrill of having their wisdom appreciated. Also vying for their place in history…the Galra will not be outdone at anything if they can help it, they bring their own surprise to this diplomatic convention.”

“Do they?” Allura was well aware of the inborn Galran need to dominate, they had historically been very competitive about everything even before Zarkon had stoked that drive into a war machine. “And what historical surprise at they intending to present.”

Lotor glanced around, but nobody was paying attention. The food tables were open and guests were immersing themselves in a feast that had come together from all the corners of the universe. He reached into his robes and pulled out an envelope, which he handed over. It wasn’t sealed, and she easily pulled out the papers that were inside.

They were copies of original documents, scaled down to half size. She could tell just from the many paragraphs of small print that this wasn’t anywhere near the full document, it was similar to many bills and laws she had witnessed being written and signed back in her father’s day. She also knew enough about such things that she only needed a quick skim to get the gist of what she was looking at.

“This is a freedom declaration,” she realized, murmuring out loud as she read. “Effective on the third quintant of the thirteenth phoeb of the 28327th decaphoeb, all Galra citizens are hereby summoned back to Central Command, surrendering all non-free territories, planets, stations and vessels to the possession of their native peoples…this goes into effect tomorrow! You ordered all occupied planets freed within two movements of retaking the throne, are you mad? They’ll have you killed!”

“I did no such thing,” Lotor replied, taking the papers out of her hands and sliding them back into the envelope. “I simply presented the Nocturline crystals to the court as a new power source, and explained that the Galra reliance on quintessence was a plot by an Altean witch who’d destroyed Daibazaal to keep them under her thumb while scapegoating her own people. Very few had any love for Haggar and many suffered their own abuse under my father, the chance to distance from both was very tempting. The idea that the Galra needed to turn against her by gathering together and re-establishing their own home planet was floated in a council session last movement, all I did was sign the edict when they brought it to me.”

“That’s why all citizens are being called back to Central Command?” Allura asked, scarcely believing it.

“Indeed. Though to be fair, all citizens won’t return and those who don’t won’t be penalized,” Lotor admitted. “There are too many and they’ve spread too far. This is a statement meant to be a beginning. There will be many occupied planets that will remain so, that’s simply not in my power to change so quickly no matter how much I may want to. Founding a new planet takes resources and their ingrained method for dealing with that is to conquer and take them, it will take me time to move an entire Empire into an age of free trade. But this document will at least allow me the immediate power to ban the more inhumane treatment of occupied peoples.”

For Allura, that simply wasn’t good enough. She understood it, the Empire was disturbingly vast and very powerful, and Lotor had to tread carefully if he didn’t want it to fracture further and have much of it turn against him. But she hated that any power they had over the Galra hinged on whether Lotor moved too fast or slow, and that the hold was so tenuous that change had to be incremental.

She also understood that her view was from the outside though, and that it was very different from Lotor’s. Lotor had never lived in a free world, his entire life had been one of both personal and intergalactic oppression. Even imagining a universe where all people were treated equally was like an exercise in fantasy for him, he had never lived it the way Allura had. For her, freedom and equality were the default. For him, they were a dream. Just the ability to ban occupying Galra from torturing or killing their victims was like his first glimpse of the sun after a ten-thousand-year-long night.

But she wanted more, and she hated that she couldn’t have it. And although he didn’t dare say it, lest wishing for too much shatter the delicate dream he was so close to touching, she knew Lotor hated it as well.

There was a small commotion at the little table between the two wedding parties, and Allura looked over to find Adam and Shiro softly arguing. Adam was firmly refusing something, and Shiro was smiling and replying too quietly to hear and gently leveraging his greater strength to pull Adam to his feet.

“He’s not enjoying this much, is he?” Lotor noted.

“As far as I can tell, he hates it,” Allura replied. “But then, he doesn’t seem to be the diplomatic type, does he?”

“No, but he’s definitely a great show off in smaller groups,” Lotor pointed out. “I thought something like this would be right up his alley.”

“Lotor, read the room a bit,” Allura advised. “Lots of people, cameras, noise, being the center of all that focus. I imagine Adam was probably much more tolerant of this kind of attention…before.”

She preferred not to specify that she meant back before he had been dropped in an arena and made to fight for his life for the entertainment of others. She could see by the change in Lotor’s expression exactly when he understood what she meant, and that he regretted making light of it.

“It’s still fresh for him,” she reminded him. “He’s been asleep for two thirds of his freedom. Consciously, he’s barely more than a phoeb removed. I think he’s doing rather well, personally. Lance! Keith! What’s going on?”

Lance had just handed his napkin to Keith—or, rather, had just smacked him in the face with it as he rose from his chair. Others from the wedding party were rising as well and Lance grinned, pushing his chair back in as he stood.

“There’s a tradition after a formal marriage,” he answered, motioning for her to rise as well. “All the single women gather, and the bride turns her back and throws her bouquet over her shoulder. Whoever catches it is the next one to be married. If it’s a smaller, less formal wedding, the groom takes off the bride’s garter and throws that to the single men, and whoever catches it puts it on the woman who caught the bouquet. Usually by then everyone’s drunk and flirting, I probably should have mentioned that first. But since we have two grooms, they have two small bundles of flowers and each of them are going to throw one. Since this is kind of new to a lot of guests, only the wedding party is going out onto the floor.”

Allura raised her eyebrows, glancing over at Lotor.

“What are you looking at me for?” He asked. “I’m not going out there to catch you flowers, go on out there and show them what you’re made of.”

“One of them is mine,” Lance warned, grinning again as Allura shoved Lotor away and got up. “I will fight you for it.”

“Good luck,” Allura smirked. “I’ve been training to fight for decades before you were even born.”

“Fifty bucks says Lance gets it,” Allura heard Keith saying as they headed out onto the empty dance floor with Hunk and Pidge. She turned and gave him a rude gesture, which just caused him and Lotor to both laugh.

“I’ll take that bet,” Lotor agreed.

Matt was already out there, as were Sarah, Romelle, and Veronica. Griffin was staying safely back and away, sitting over by Ziran, and Gail was sitting this one out with her wife. Raina also didn’t seem to want to be involved in this one.

Kuro, however, was being guided out to join them by Curtis. He looked confused as he was deposited next to Lance, abandoned as Curtis retreated. Allura kicked off her heels and loosened her tie as Lance shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over toward the table.

“Okay, here goes!” Shiro called as Adam sighed and turned to face away from them. He was holding a small bundle of lilies, which he tossed high up over his head and back toward the waiting group.

“Oh yeah, this one’s mine,” Lance said smugly, moving in front of her and blocking her with his taller body.

“Is it?” Allura asked.

She slid around under his arm, throwing one of her own up as she came around to face him to grab him in a head lock. He flailed, and his newfound strength made it a little harder than she anticipated to hold him still. It came down to a wrestling match, until Allura managed to stretch out a foot and pull the little bundle of flowers close enough to grab it.

She stood up, holding it up triumphantly, aware that her hair was probably just as much a mess as Lance’s was now and that both of their suits were askew.

“You cheated!” Lance accused, untangling his tie from where she’d wrapped it under one of his arms for leverage.

“All’s fair in love and war,” Allura answered primly. “Isn’t that a saying on Earth?”

“Way to lose me fifty bucks, Lance,” Keith called from the table.

“You sit there and be quiet!” Lance shot back, pointing at him. “There’s still a second one!”

Allura chuckled, fanning herself with her prize as she moved away from the group to go lean back against the table by Keith and Lotor. Shiro picked up the second small flower bundle, and from the other table Curtis called out to Kuro.

“Don’t let Lance get this one! Make sure you catch it!”

“Don’t do it!” Keith warned. “He’s using you, dude!”

“Don’t you dare touch those flowers,” Lance warned Kuro, taking up a position next to him. “I fought her, and I’ll fight you too.”

Kuro had a look on his face akin to a lost child, looking back and forth between Curtis, Keith, and Lance. He clearly had no idea what he was even doing up there, but Curtis was obviously aware that Kuro had a better shot at wrestling the small bouquet away from Lance than he did.

“Here it comes,” Shiro called, smirking slightly.

He prepared to toss it over his head, but at the last minute turned and lobbed it high into the air, right toward Kuro.

“Duck!” Keith shouted the warning gleefully.

“Grab it!” Curtis directed.

Kuro decided to trust Curtis, backing up a few steps and using his own greater height to reach up for the flowers, easily standing over lance by a good couple of inches still.

“If you catch them you have to get married next!” Keith shouted quickly. “It’s legally binding!”

Kuro let out a startled shriek and ducked back away from the flowers, grabbing Lance and throwing him in front of him like a shield. Lance took the lilies straight to the face, too startled to grab them before they hit him.

“Why would you do that!?” Kuro screamed at Curtis, who by now was laughing so hard he had sunk down to his knees and was using the table as support as Lance scrambled to catch the flowers before he dropped them to the floor.

Matt was laughing to the point of tears, and Shiro was trying his absolute hardest not to laugh but only succeeding in making disturbing choking noises instead. Adam looked tired, the sole adult at this function in spite of the fact that they were surrounded by countless allies and would-be allies.

“Well, I got one,” Lance grumbled, rubbing his face where he’d been hit as he returned to the table. “But at what cost…”

“You got beat up by a girl _and_ by the flowers,” Keith said helpfully.

“He got beaten up by a warrior queen,” Lotor corrected, rising from Allura’s seat so she could have it back. “Give him a break, she packs a serious punch.”

“You have to go back to your table?” Allura guessed, knowing he couldn’t just leave his Galra delegation unattended but still slightly disappointed.

“I do. But Hunk should be joining us after most of the formalities are over, and with luck he’ll help ease them into not needing to be babysat. They trust him. So save me a dance?”

“I’ll save you two,” Allura promised, tilting her face up so he could kiss her on the cheek.

It was one day, she could deal with him having his attention taken up. He was an Emperor after all, he had responsibilities, ones she understood all too well. So she let him go without complaint, and turned her attention to the food on her plate and the conversation at her table.

* * * * * * * * * *

“How long are you not speaking to me for?” Curtis asked, biting into a piece of celery with an obnoxiously loud crunch.

“Matthew, would you please tell Curtis that I can’t tell him how long I’m not speaking to him for because I’m not speaking to him,” Kuro grumped from his own side of an impressively built wall made of cutlery and napkins.

“Until you feel bad,” Matt translated around a mouthful of bread.

“What if I already feel slightly bad?” Curtis asked.

Kuro snorted and speared a piece of cucumber with his fork, looking up at Matt.

“Please tell him that he helped Shiro make me look like an idiot and hasn’t even apologized for it,” Kuro requested, glancing across the table at Matt.

“You don’t feel bad enough,” Matt told Curtis.

“Oh come on, it’s a wedding tradition,” Curtis complained. “One part of the couple is supposed to go out there and try to catch it, and I obviously wasn’t going to do it. I’m expected to have dignity.”

“Matt, please tell Curtis that he’s getting dangerously close to offensive right now.”

“You’re about to get stabbed in the happy bits with a butter knife,” Matt warned.

“Okay,” Curtis sighed, putting down his fork. “That’s enough.”

“Matt, tell Curtis—”

“No,” Curtis cut him off, disassembling the cutlery wall. He dropped everything on the table and got up, hooking Kuro under the arms and tugging him up out of his seat. “Come on. Come here.”

“You can’t make me if I don’t want to,” Kuro answered petulantly. He reached down to grip his chair with both hands, remaining seated.

“Really?” Curtis huffed. Kuro pointedly looked away from him and refused to stand up. “Fine.”

Kuro abruptly found the world tilting as Curtis grabbed the whole chair, tilting it backward so far he had a brief few seconds of panic as he thought he was going to hit the ground. He let out a squeak and gripped the chair tighter, but Curtis only dragged it back away from the table.

“Knock it off!” Kuro snarled. “Don’t make me zap the shit out of you!”

“Anything you can do I can do better, Sweetpea.”

Curtis dragged the chair back a few yards before righting it, moving around to crouch down in front of Kuro before he could escape.

“I’m sorry, okay? We thought it would _be_ fun, we weren’t making fun _of_ you.”

“You know how I feel about this stuff,” Kuro said sharply. He was already uncomfortable with the ridiculously large amount of innuendo that went on among the couples in the group, being singled out for relationship-related things wasn’t exactly his idea of a good time. “You know exactly what would’ve happened if I caught those stupid flowers. I’d be teased for _weeks_ about planning my upcoming marriage, and literally everything would get turned into a suggestive “wedding night” joke.”

“That’s all they are, jokes,” Curtis sighed. “Nobody actually cares what we do in our private life, sex is just one of the things a lot of adults joke about. Just ignore them.”

“That’s easy for you to say!” Kuro dropped his voice down, not wanting their conversation to be shared. “You’re a manwhore!”

“That’s…” Curtis frowned up at him, processing that. “Okay, that’s technically true so I’m not really offended, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“Oh come on,” Kuro gave him a Look. “You like being tied up and choked, everything they joke about is mild as far as you’re concerned. I’m a forty-year-old virgin, the jokes sting a little bit more when they’re aimed at me.”

“You’re technically only like seven,” Curtis corrected. “Nobody here expects you to have my…breadth of expertise.”

Kuro pinned him with a glare until Curtis sighed, letting his head fall forward into his lap. He took a deep breath, raising his head back up a moment later and looking a bit more contrite.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, this time with a little more feeling. “I just thought it would be cute if you caught a bouquet.”

“Yeah, well I’m a grown man, I don’t want to be “cute,” okay?” Kuro said sharply.

“What is wrong with you today?” Curtis asked, giving him a light pinch in the side. “Hey, look at me. You’ve been going back and forth between cheerful puppy and biting my head off all day, what gives?”

“I haven’t been biting your head off,” Kuro said defensively.

Curtis sat back on his heels and gave him a look, one that said he was serious and knew better. Kuro shook his head, trying to shrug it off.

“I just don’t like this, okay?” He replied. “This wedding thing, I’m not into it.”

“The ceremony is over, babe, all that’s left to do is have lunch and eat cake,” Curtis tried to be soothing, and for some reason that just irritated Kuro further. “I’m sorry about the bouquet toss thing, I didn’t think it would work you up so bad.”

“It’s not just the bouquet thing,” Kuro tried not to let frustration color his words. “It’s everything. This whole thing, it’s just…it’s pointless to me, it doesn’t mean anything. This one, the one they had at their house, just weddings in general, they’re nothing to me.”

“Okay,” Curtis looked a bit confused, not really following. “I mean, I get that. They don’t really have weddings in the quintessence field and you only have some bare bones traces of Shiro’s memory as a base. There’s no reason for it to mean anything to you.”

“But it means something to _you,_” Kuro finally spilled what had been bothering him all day. “No matter what you are right now, part of you grew up here. You grew up human. This kind of thing is a big part of your world view, it’s something everyone in your life expects you to eventually do. Humans are born, they grow up, then a lot of them devote most of their energy to find the one person—or couple of people, I guess—they want to devote the whole rest of their lives to. And there’s a ticking clock counting down the days until you make it official so that everyone can start bugging you about having babies.”

Curtis was quiet for a moment, looking uncomfortable again. He glanced around to make sure nobody was close enough to hear them and cleared his throat, leaning in slightly and lowering his voice.

“You, um…you are aware that you can’t…that you’re not…,” he tried, tripping over his words. “We’re not really in a position to worry about you and…babies.”

Kuro took a deep breath, willing himself to keep his hands in his lap and not put them around Curtis’ neck.

“Yeah, I know I can’t get pregnant, thank you,” he said through clenched teeth. “_That wasn’t my point_.”

“Then…” Curtis looked confused again, which Kuro knew was the Gold side coming out.

Even before he’d ascended, they’d never really been friends because he’d been awkward and kind of emotionally dense. As a Gold he’d been brilliant, academically speaking, but still lacking any sort of emotional intelligence. It was going to take some time for the two halves to mesh completely enough for the strengths of each to overcome the weaknesses of the other.

Kuro waited patiently, absently tapping the back of one hand with the fingertips of the other, while Curtis put two and two together and came up with five. It took him another moment or two to realize he had to subtract one, and he finally understood the problem. Kuro knew he’d figured it out when Curtis winced.

“I’m sorry.” This time the apology had some actual weight to it, as Curtis finally managed to see the day from his point of view.

He stood up, moving over to grab his empty chair and pull it over, sitting down so he was facing Kuro. All joking was gone now as he gestured out toward everyone, indicating the wedding in general.

“This has nothing to do with me or you,” Curtis insisted. “The bouquet thing was _not_ some heavy-handed way of saying I want you to move faster. Keith was being a jackass, there’s nothing legally binding about it, it’s just an old wives tale that whoever catches it gets married next. It’s a romantic fortune-telling game, that’s it. I’m excited today because I care about Adam and this day is about him, even if he doesn’t really want it to be.”

“Well, now everyone knows he’s married,” Kuro answered. “That means once this all dies down, people are going to start honing in on whoever’s _not_ married and start pushing it.”

“And I don’t care if they do,” Curtis replied. “To turn your own words back at you, no matter what I was before, I have forever now. I can wait as long as I have to for you to decide you want me around long term, in whatever form that takes. We’re here to enjoy the day and get free cake, that’s all.”

Kuro didn’t really buy that. Marriage was such a huge part of human life—in the Western world, at least, he supposed he couldn’t really speak for other cultures—and Curtis had undoubtedly been steeped in that idea since birth. That there was really nothing he wanted out of this relationship for himself was not only hard to believe, but it would be disturbingly unhealthy if it were true. A relationship was a two-way street, both parties were supposed to have their wants fulfilled by it for it to work.

A few yards away, Adam and Shiro rose from their seats. Curtis glanced over and made a slight face.

“Shit,” he whispered.

Uh oh.

“What?” Kuro sighed, not liking the sound of that at all. “What now?”

“There’s one other thing I didn’t tell you about,” Curtis answered, looking pained. “And now that you’re already upset you’re gonna be pissed about it.”

“Oh God,” Kuro groaned. “What?”

“The first dance isn’t just for Shiro and Adam,” Curtis answered. “Adam didn’t want to be the center of attention for a whole dance, so the best men and their dates are supposed to go up too.”

Oh no. Oh _no_. No, that was not good news at all. Kuro felt a flood of panic as Curtis got up and offered him a hand, and shook his head violently.

“No,” he protested. “I can’t. I can’t go up there, I can’t dance.”

“Sure you can dance, I’ve caught you dancing alone in the house a ton of times.”

“Yeah, alone,” Kuro stressed. “I can dance for exercise, but that school of dance is performative and meant to be done by one person. I can’t do any formal dancing!”

“Oh, well,” Curtis glanced over at Shiro and Adam, who were signaling for their chosen song to start, and Keith and Lance, who were rising from their seats. “Just…follow my lead, it will be fine.”

“It will _not_ be fine.”

“Okay, then it won’t be as bad as you’re imagining,” Curtis insisted, offering his hand again. “Come on, there’s literally nothing to it. Thirteen-year-olds do it at dances all the time, all you have to do is hold hands and sway to the music.”

Kuro groaned softly and took Curtis’ hand, letting himself be pulled to his feet. He really had been biting the poor man’s head off all day, and maybe he had been projecting his own insecurities on him. This was important to Curtis, and obviously important to Adam and Takashi, he could manage one dance.

The music started, but it wasn’t anything Kuro recognized. Both Adam and Takashi shared a preference for older music, the kinds of things Kuro wouldn’t see performed on shows like _American Talent_. It was a bit on the slow side, and the singer was a man. Multiple men, as different voices joined in.

Takashi and Adam started the dance alone, and Kuro guessed that was to at least pay homage to the tradition of the first dance before they were no longer alone. After a bit, Takashi glanced over to where the two best men stood with their dates and motioned for them to join them, and Kuro let Curtis take his hand and pull him out onto the dance floor.

It was only the three couples out here, but at the edges of the dance floor those who had brought dates were joining in. Ziran was in his chair and couldn’t, but seemed perfectly fine as Romelle joined James nearby…Kuro was pretty sure they had a group thing going on at this point even though they all steadfastly avoided answering questions or comments about it. Allura motioned for Lotor to come over, and of course he dropped everything and went running.

Pidge was trying to show that Altean girl, Ariella, how to do the dance, having insisted on bringing a friend as her date because she was tired of her parents hinting that she might start looking into relationships soon even though she had no interest in romance. Hunk…had four different people of various alien races vying for his attention and apparently didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so was just standing with them all and chit-chatting instead of picking one or making a run for it as he probably wanted to do.

Matt was three sheets to the wind and hanging in a bemused Raina’s arms. She was sure in for an evening.

Kuro himself had no idea what he was doing. There were enough people at the edges of the dance floor that the guests’ attention would definitely be well-split, but it was also fortunate that there wasn’t too much Kuro was embarrassed by; he immediately made a misstep and stepped on Curtis’ foot as soon as the taller man tried to guide him into moving.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“Oh, you are not.”

“No, I’m not,” Kuro admitted.

He was half tempted to step on Curtis’ foot again, but that would be more of him just being a jerk because he was in a mood. Instead he gave the dance a try, but gave up a few more steps in when he almost did step on Curtis again by accident. Apparently thirteen-year-olds just swayed to music, and if that was good enough for a dance that needed to be good enough for a wedding. He let go of Curtis’ hands and put his arms around his neck instead, effectively stopping him from trying to keep them moving across the dance floor.

Curtis laughed softly and gave in, putting his arms around Kuro’s middle and gently swaying instead of continuing to try to dance. This was supposed to be about the new couple, neither of them were eager to draw away too much attention by one of them breaking an ankle.

Adam obviously knew the song, having picked it. Even over the actual music, they were close enough that he could hear him start singing. Takashi joined in a moment later, ridiculously off-key but feeling it a little too much to care. Kuro was also pretty sure Takashi’d had a few drinks by now and didn’t give a damn how he sounded.

“When it’s love you make,” Curtis started to sing softly, making Kuro scrunch up his nose.

“You too?” He asked. “Am I the only one that didn’t bother to learn the song?”

“Then it’s love you take,” Curtis kept going, only grinning in response. He hooked one of Kuro’s feet with his own, pulling it out from under him and dipping him back as he lost his balance, visibly delighting in the brief moment of panic when Kuro grabbed him tightly. “I will defend, I will fight, I’ll be there when you need me…”

“You’re going to be six feet under if you do that to me again with no warning,” Kuro whispered.

It was meant to be heavy threat, but he could feel his face getting warm as he undoubtedly began to flush pink from the attention. He understood suddenly why Adam might not want the world to see some of his interactions with Takashi, how some moments that most people might find cute and innocent could feel so intimate it almost seemed indecent to have an audience.

He buried his face against Curtis’ shoulder when he was back upright, trying to hide the stupid blush that he knew was not necessary for something so innocuous as a dance and a sweet song lyric.

“Sorry,” Curtis laughed, a soft sound in his ear as he lightly kissed Kuro’s temple, returning to the gentle swaying and retiring the theatrics. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“It’s fine,” Kuro murmured, keeping his face hidden.

It wasn’t fine, though. It was so damn annoying how Curtis only needed five minutes and a few choice words and actions to take him from pissed off to blushing like some kind of inexperienced teenager. As hard as Kuro had worked to avoid it, and as much as he acted otherwise, Curtis had him wrapped around his little finger. It might have seemed to outside observers that Curtis was the one who would crawl across glass at a sweetly-worded request, the truth was that it was very much the opposite.

But if Kuro could just make sure nobody ever found that out, maybe it _would_ eventually be fine.

*** * * * * * * * * ***

**All For Love**  
Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, Sting

When it's love you give  
(_I'll be a man of good faith_)  
Then in love you'll live  
I'll make a stand, I won't break  
I'll be the rock you can build on  
Be there when you're old  
To have and to hold  
  
When there's love inside  
(_I swear I'll always be strong_)  
Then there's a reason why  
I'll prove to you we belong  
I'll be the wall that protects you  
From the wind and the rain  
From the hurt and pain  
  
Let's make it all for one and all for love  
Let the one you hold be the one you want  
The one you need  
Cause when it's all for one, it's one for all  
When there's someone that should know  
Then just let your feelings show  
And make it all for one and all for love  
  
When it's love you make  
(_I'll be the fire in your night_)  
And when it's love you take  
I will defend, I will fight  
I'll be there when you need me  
When honor's at stake  
This vow I will make  
  
That it's all for one and all for love  
Let the one you hold be the one you want  
The one you need  
Cause when it's all for one, it's one for all  
When there's someone that should know  
Then just let your feelings show  
And make it all for one and all for love  
  
Don't lay our love to rest  
Cause we could stand up to the test  
We got everything, and more  
Than we had planned  
More than the rivers that run the land  
We've got it all in our hands  
  
Now it's all for one and all for love  
Let the one you hold be the one you want  
The one you need  
Cause when it's all for one, it's one for all  
When there's someone that should know  
Then just let your feelings show  
When there's someone that you want  
When there's someone that you need  
Let's make it all…  
All for one…and all for love.


	26. Chapter 26

Winter was firmly entrenched in New Mexico, hardly the snow-filled horror of Montana but definitely not the golden warmth of Brazil. The blankets were warm and the bed was cozy, making it difficult for Adam to snap awake when he sensed his bedroom door opening.

He was used to Takashi staying up all hours then trying to sneak into bed, so the door opening didn’t set off any alarms. Adam only became blearily aware that something was off when the footfalls crossing the room were far lighter and quicker than Takashi’s.

“Tio?”

The youthful, whispered voice was accompanied by a gentle shake that drew Adam completely from his slumber. He fought it the entire way, but after a minute or so he opened one eye sleepily.

“Unf,” he answered elegantly, trying to focus on his young nephew. “What?”

“Are you awake?” Gabriel whispered. Which was not a logical question to ask, since Adam had just spoken to him, but the kid was only four and hadn’t learned what thinking was yet.

“I am now,” Adam mumbled, pushing himself up on one elbow. He picked up his phone to check the time. “It’s barely five, kiddo. What’s on fire?”

Gabriel looked around furtively, as if he were trying to make sure they weren’t being spied on. Which, again, made no sense since the boy was occasionally dense enough to not notice his mother standing right there while he was getting into trouble.

“We need to see if Santa Claus was here!” The reply finally came in a conspiratorial whisper, just in case Santa was still here and might get upset if he was found out.

Adam lamented the loss of sleep that came along with playing holiday host, but he couldn’t exactly deny his nephew this particular joy of childhood. He grudgingly sat up, kicking his feet over the side of the bed and running a hand through his hair. He had expected his family to come to the house today, he just hadn’t expected it to be this early.

“Hey,” he lightly nudged Gabriel with his foot to draw his attention back to him. “Is your mother downstairs?”

“Yes,” Gabriel answered. He shuffled over to one of the bedroom windows, peeking out through the curtains to try to get a look at the back of the house. Unfortunately his spatial comprehension was a little bit off and he didn’t realize the bedroom he was standing in was right above the room he was trying to get a look at. “Her and Grandmom said I can’t check the sun room without permission.”

“Of course they did,” Adam muttered, dragging himself out of the bed and stretching. Both Sofia and his mother knew he would ignore them if they tried to get him up early, so they’d weaponized the family toddler. He would have to get them back for that. “Okay, I guess we should go check it out and see, huh? Give me a minute.”

Adam grabbed some clothes and slipped into the master bathroom to change, deciding to forgo a shower for the moment so he didn’t make Gabriel wait any longer than necessary. He threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and came out to find the little boy jumping on the bed, grabbing him mid-air and carrying him out of the bedroom.

As soon as he set foot in the hall he could smell food cooking, eliciting a growl from his stomach that announced even if he was still sleep it was now wide awake.

“Grandmom’s been making herself right at home in the kitchen, huh?” Adam asked Gabriel, carefully carrying him downstairs and setting him on his feet when they reached the foyer.

Gabriel took off as soon as he let him go, scurrying down the hall toward the kitchen. Adam followed at a slower pace, glancing in the sitting room as he passed. His father was in there, along with his uncle Raji and his two kids, and Adam’s brother-in-law, Mark.

“Hey,” Adam signed as he spoke, even though he knew it wasn’t necessary since the non-speakers could still hear fine. “The little gremlin just dragged me out of bed to go see the Christmas tree. You ready to witness the childish glee of Christmas or whatever the hell Hallmark calls it?”

“It’s the middle of winter, why aren’t you wearing shoes?” Simon asked. Which was not in any way an answer to the question.

“It’s my house,” Adam answered, looking down at himself. “ I can have bare feet if I want to. You’re not the boss of me here.”

_He’s not the boss of anyone, anywhere_, Raji replied as everyone rose to leave the room. _Even the cat argued with him this morning._

“Are you trying to fight my cat again?” Adam asked Simon, feigning offense on their way down the hall to the kitchen. “Here, under his own roof.”

“Your cat’s a punk bitch,” Simon answered. He sounded so confident, but he still looked around warily to make sure the animal in question didn’t decide to appear and put him in his place.

Sofia was already in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar with a cup of coffee. His mother was at the counter by the stove, lining up the serving dishes to load them up from the pans in front of her. She glanced up at them all as they came in.

“Oh good, just in time. Somebody take out the silverware.”

“Ugh,” Adam groaned, letting his head fall back as he padded past her to the coffee maker, which was thankfully still loaded up with a half-full carafe of fresh coffee. “When did you people even get here? Do none of you sleep?”

“Oh, stop whining,” Sofia scoffed. “It’s already seven back at home! We got here an hour ago.”

“How’d you get in?”

“The key you leave in the fake rock out in the garden,” Jacinta answered lightly, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek in greeting. “Getting up early one day won’t kill you, honey. Besides, it’s Christmas.”

“It’s Christmas!” Gabriel repeated, dancing around in the kitchen to make sure he hadn’t been forgotten. “We’re going to go see if Santa came last night!”

“Yes, that is an important part of the day, isn’t it?” Jacinta humored him. “Gabriel, let Tio get some coffee first, then we’ll all go check.”

Gabriel pouted, eager to find out if Santa had gotten all eight of his letters informing him that he would be here on Christmas morning and not still visiting Nalquod, and for a moment it was like looking at a miniature version of himself. Adam knew the kid’s pain, he very clearly remembered the many Christmas mornings when he and Sofia would be up before dawn trying to act casual and pretend there was a good reason they were in their parents’ bedroom at four in the morning.

“I’m trying to hurry,” he assured Gabriel, stepping back so he could see that he was actively working on preparing his coffee. “Just a few more minutes, kiddo, let everyone grab breakfast and we’ll all go out together.”

Gabriel gave a sigh and laid out face-down on the kitchen floor in defeat. Again, not an activity Adam wasn’t personally familiar with some days.

“Where did you park the ship?” Adam wondered, stepping over Gabriel to get to the counter where the plates were. Simon handed him an empty one so he could fill it from the serving plates Jacinta was laying out.

“Over in that empty area just past the highway,” Simon replied. “Near your Lion. Is Shiro joining us today? I know his family doesn’t really celebrate.”

“Takashi celebrates,” Adam assured him. “He grew up here in the States, some Western ways wore off on him. He’ll be here later, his grandmother’s coming out today to stay in Seattle through New Year and he wanted to be there to see her. Having a Lion makes it a five minute trip back here, tops.”

He finished loading his plate and started to pick it up, but Sofia stopped him. She put two fingers on the edge of it and pressed it back down to the counter, pinning it so he couldn’t lift it back up.

“Speaking of Takashi,” she said a little too smugly. “Let’s see it.”

Adam hesitated. His mother set her spatula down and came over a little too quickly, like she was just waiting for someone to bring up the subject.

“Let’s see what?” Adam wondered, feeling like a zoo exhibit.

The looks both Sofia and Jacinta gave him were identical, and in that moment nobody could ever say the two weren’t related. Even Simon crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. Suddenly, Adam realized what they were talking about.

“You knew?” He asked, feeling offended. So much for getting to break the news over lunch after Takashi got back.

“Everyone knew,” Sofia scoffed.

“Everyone knew?”

“Everyone knew!” Sofia repeated. “Your boyfriend would trade state secrets for a Snickers bar, do you really think he’d be able to go the whole time without telling someone?”

Adam sighed and set down his coffee, mildly sulking his way to the living room. It was true, Takashi couldn’t lie for anything and if he kept an exciting secret for too long he started getting weird. In hindsight it was only to be expected that he’d be on the phone with Adam’s sister or parents well before Christmas.

The “it” that he had told them about was currently nestled snuggly in one of the two stockings hanging on the mantle, right on top of the other small gifts that were waiting for the other man’s return before they got opened. Adam retrieved the ring box and returned to the kitchen, tossing it to Sofia.

She flipped it open and inspected the ring very closely, closely enough that Adam was satisfied she at least hadn’t seen it before him. After a minute she seemed to decide it was suitable and that Takashi wouldn’t need to be marched back to the jewelry store, passing it over for Jacinta and Simon to see.

“You did say yes, right?” Sofia prodded him. “Because there’s no other man in any dimension who’ll ever be willing to marry you.”

“Don’t be mean,” Jacinta nudged her from behind. “There are plenty of men who would give their right arm for a chance with Adao.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Adam said dryly, finally taking a sip from his coffee mug and making a face at his sister. “You know I helped save the universe, right? Like, the whole universe and everything in it?”

“Ugh, that was last year,” Sofia rolled her eyes. “How long are you going to ride that one achievement? Did you say yes or not?”

“Yes, I said yes.”

“Can we please check for Santa now?” Gabriel moaned from the floor like a very small man besieged by minor inner demons.

“Okay, okay,” Adam gave in, quickly draining half of his mug. He took the ring box as his father handed it back and shoved it in his pocket, grabbing his breakfast plate and herding everyone toward the back of the house. “You heard the man, the Christmas tree awaits.”

* * * * *

The string lights twinkled from the ceiling, the only light in the room thanks to the automatic steel shutters hidden behind the deep purple curtains. It illuminated the space, comfortably-sized and neatly arranged with everything in its place. The painting that was currently in progress was pushed back into the corner on its easel to keep it out of the way, the small table that usually held open paint and brushes and cups of water folded up and tucked away in the closet.

That was fortunate, since the door flew open without so much as a knock, swinging wide right through the spot where it normally would have made a wet, colorful mess.

“Keith!”

Keith ignored the voice, pulling his blanket tighter around him and burying his face in his pillow. His reward was a sudden knee in his back as his nightmare-come-to-life jumped on the bed.

“Keith! Keith. Keith. Keith. Keith. Ke—”

“Selia, knock it off!” Keith finally exclaimed into his pillow, still refusing to raise his head. “You’re sixteen, not ten! What do you want?”

“Get your stupid butt out of bed!” She demanded, grabbing the blanket and trying to pull it off him. “It’s getting late, I need you to help me take pictures for my Christmas posts!”

Keith let her pull for a moment, waiting until she gave a good, hard tug with both hands to let the blanket go and watch her fall backwards off the bed. He picked up his pillow and covered his face with it instead.

“Come on, please?” Selia insisted plaintively, scampering up off the floor to throw open the curtains and hit the controls for the outer shutters to open. “I have everything all set up, I need these pictures!”

“No. I told you before, I’m not your social media intern.”

“I’ll tell Lance you’re being mean to me,” she threatened.

“Go ahead,” Keith scoffed. “He’s not the boss of me.”

The room went quiet, and he assumed he’d won. Until he heard the familiar tone of numbers being put into his phone as she used the code to unlock it.

Keith was up in a flash, throwing the pillow off his face and making a grab for the phone. He was fast but so was his sister, she ducked under his arms and darted out the door before he could get a good hold of her. He caught her down the hall, just before they reached the sitting room and she would have had space to escape, wrestling her to the floor and fighting the phone out of her hands.

“Good,” Selia chirped as they rose, dusting themselves off. “You’re up! Now you can take my pictures!”

Keith considered throwing her out a window, but he didn’t want to deal with an attempt at grounding him at his age. He couldn’t wait until winter break ended and he could go back to the college dorms, being at home was driving him insane. He was strongly considering renting a permanent place, even though he’d already decided against it because of his sporadic travels for the Blade of Marmora.

She wasn’t going to leave him alone until she got what she wanted, he knew that. Christmas wasn’t a Galra holiday and nobody here on Daibazaal celebrated it, but she’d leveraged being the sister of a Paladin of Voltron to grow a social media following on several planets and Earth was one of them. Where she’d gotten the Christmas decor for her backdrop he didn’t know; probably in the boxes of Earth holiday decorations she’d insisted on bringing along when they’d moved here six months ago.

“Where are Mom and Dad?” Keith wondered, holding out his hand for the camera she had at the ready. She handed it over and ran over to her little setup grabbing a fake, partially wrapped gift and pretending to open it.

“Mom had an early meeting. Dad went to wait for her so they could go get breakfast after.”

Keith patiently sat through five changes of the scenery before he finally refused to take any more pictures. Maybe it wasn’t a Galra holiday, but it was a human one and they were half human. It was a day off for him, not a day to spend indulging Selia’s weird creative whims. He also had to get ready to leave. Even if nobody here celebrated, they still had gifts to give out to their friends on Earth.

“I’m going to take the presents to Adam’s house,” Keith announced, tossing her camera on the sofa as he abandoned his post. “Are you coming?”

“Oh! Yes!” Selia exclaimed.

“Fine. I’m leaving in half a varga, be ready to go.”

He started for the kitchen, where he kept a container of instant coffee. He didn’t drink it often enough to bother with the effort of getting fresh beans imported, but he definitely felt like he needed some now. Selia skipped along with him, indulging her natural gift of somehow always being in the way.

“Are we taking the Black Lion?” She asked excitedly.

“Unless you can flap your arms quick enough to go faster than light speed.”

“You don’t have to be such a Scrooge, we could have been taking a striker over to Altea and using a wormhole.”

She made a valid point, but Keith wasn’t going to let her know that.

“Well, we’re not,” he said lamely, filling his kettle and getting it started. “Go get dressed.”

As usual, she was completely indifferent to his attitude. She had her pictures and she was about to head to Earth to show off whatever new Christmas outfit their mother had bought her, nothing could ruin her day.

Keith leaned back against the counter and looked at his phone, finding a message already there and waiting for him thanks to the time difference between Daibazaal and Altea. He opened it up to find the phrase “Merry Christmas” followed by what appeared to be as many heart emojis as Lance could possibly fit on his screen, along with a single smiley face and a “See you this evening!”

Keith shook his head, figuring it was no wonder Lance and Selia got along so well. His own message was simple and unadorned, but he knew Lance would read the honesty in it without any extra symbols or pictures.

“I can’t wait.”

* * * * *

The wormhole that burst open just beyond Earth’s moon was one of twenty-four scheduled daily on the hour. As the technology got more stable on the Earth side—which would result in the demand for the travel mode growing—they would eventually become every half hour, perhaps every fifteen minutes. But hourly was fine for now, since the Red Lion’s pilot usually got bumped to the front of the line when he had to go off world.

The low orbit was buzzing with ships already lined up to go through this wormhole as well as others being processed by customs on their way out. Lance carried an assigned signal generator that alerted all nearby ships he was coming, just like all the other Lion pilots, so he was able to skip the whole check-in process and drop down through the familiar atmosphere to the coordinates he knew by heart.

New Mexico, the Galaxy Garrison base.

He could have flown the route in his sleep, it felt like coming home. And it felt even more welcoming as he came in to land and spotted the Yellow and Green Lions already seated on the far end of the tarmac. There was a Jeep parked nearby that he recognized as Hunk’s, the dark green standing out against the thin layer of winter snow and ice.

Red touched down as elegantly as always and Lance disembarked, taking a deep breath with a sigh of happiness. Altea was a beautiful planet, lush and lovely, but the air on Earth had a chemical makeup that was off by just enough that he could easily smell the difference. Especially now, with the chill of Christmas on the air.

“Lance!”

Pidge climbed out of the Jeep to come running at him, her long ponytail bobbing as she slipped and slid on the ice. She was following in Sam’s and Matt’s footsteps and getting kind of tall, but being part Altean helped him catch her without falling anyway.

“Merry Christmas, dude!” Hunk called cheerfully, picking his way over more carefully. “Glad you made it!”

“There’s no way on any planet I’m gonna miss Christmas!” Lance grinned, setting Pidge down on her feet. “Keith’s coming later too, after he visits Adam.”

“Awesome!” Pidge said happily, releasing Lance to cling to Hunk, who was still the more solid and steady one. “My mom cooked tons of food, and Matt’s got a Christmas movie marathon ready!”

Hunk reached down and lifted her clear off her feet, making her squeak as he gestured for Lance to follow them back to the Jeep.

“How’s your family?” He wondered.

“They’re great,” Lance answered, doing a slip-and-slide of his own to get to the vehicle. “The kids love visiting me on Altea, and Rachel really likes living there. Mom’s visited a couple times and I think she’s considering moving there when she and Dad retire. For now, though, I think she counts the days until the breaks are over and Keith and I come back here for school.”

He made it to the Jeep without slamming his face on the ground, which was always a win, and climbed into the back so Pidge could reclaim her front seat. She was finally big enough to see over the dashboard, bless.

“How’s the training?” She asked, glancing back as she fastened her seatbelt. “Altea’s space exploration branch isn’t military like ours, is it?”

“It’s not, which is nice,” Lance confirmed. “Just a regular ship crew, small teams. I can’t apply to be part of it full time or go on longer trips until I graduate, everyone on a team is supposed to have a specialty.”

Hunk, of course, knew him well enough to sense the faint hesitation.

“But?” He prompted.

“But…I don’t think I’m going to apply,” Lance admitted. “It’s cool and all, and it’s a pretty efficient, well-funded program, but I’m not a researcher. I’m a pilot. I’m a Kirk, not a Red Shirt.”

“So…Keith told you he had the Blade’s blessing to start his own exploratory search and rescue team after graduation and he asked you to be a part of it?” Pidge asked.

Lance had been expecting a little bit more questioning before he got to that part, it was a bit of a surprise to reach it immediately. He looked back and forth between Hunk and Pidge.

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Last time he was here visiting he had to take a call from Kolivan,” Hunk answered. “I heard him talking about it.”

“Well, did you happen to overhear that he plans to ask the rest of you too?” Lance asked, leaning forward against the seats between them. Pidge perked up immediately. “You guys, Adam, and Shiro?”

“What?”

“Yeah, it only makes sense,” Lance answered. “We all have Lions and armor, we’re all equipped to deal with anything dangerous we come across. And now that we know the Lions have their own teludav mechanism, we can go farther and faster than any other exploratory team anyone can send.”

“It’s a logical step, I guess,” Pidge supposed. “The Lions can each hold a ton of supplies, and since we could get to disaster sites to start triage until bigger aid ships arrive.”

“Man, can you imagine?” Hunk asked, sounding wistful. “Instead of running around fighting wars, we could go and explore and spend time studying planets nobody else has set foot on! We could be the people who map the far corners of the universe!”

“Do you think Shiro and Adam would go for it?” Lance asked. They were older, and maybe a bit less interested in adventure, but it was hard to tell. “I think they’d go for it. Adam hates the military, and Shiro would probably ditch the uniform in a heartbeat if it meant he could lead a team without constantly answering to the brass again.”

“I dunno, but you’ve got three more years before you find out,” Pidge pointed out. “Keith’s not going to start any of that until you guys graduate, and who knows? They might have kids by then.”

Shiro and Adam with kids, that was a weird thought. Not that they’d have them, but that they’d possibly have them in just three short years. They seemed like the kind of people who waited until their mid-forties to really get a family started.

“I guess you’re right,” Lance sighed, dropping back to stretch out in the back seat. “So, you guys packed and ready to stay at the castle?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Pidge grinned briefly, but it faltered. “I can’t believe it’s been a year since…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to, they knew what she was talking about. The whole car fell silent then, all three of them transported back in time to that terrible day.

“Hey,” Lance was the first to shake it off. Living on Altea part time, seeing that statue every day, he had learned to deal with it. “We all miss her. We miss them all. But nobody gave their life in that fight for the rest of us to be sad forever. Tomorrow’s about celebrating lives, not mourning deaths.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hunk said softly, pulling into a familiar driveway next to Matt’s and Pidge’s cars. “It just doesn’t seem fair.”

“War’s never fair,” Pidge murmured after another moment of silence. “Come on. Mom made Crockpot hot chocolate, let’s get inside before Matt drinks it all.”

Lance climbed out with the others, stopping halfway up the drive to look up at the familiar house fondly. Tomorrow would be a year since Allura died, and since they’d lost Sasha Nikolaev and Lotor. One year since the return of Daibazaal and Altea, of Nalquod and Rygnirath and the Dalterion Belt. A whole system returned, and with it worlds of people who had been returned to life after those lives had been cut tragically short ten thousand years ago.

Lance knew he should be happy for the billions of lives Allura had restored, but with the holiday season being all about friends and family, he still couldn’t help but miss her.

* * * * *

“Takashi! Ryou!”

Kuro had been known to sleep through a lot of things, once even spending three hours in a swimming pool because he hadn’t noticed his mattress being moved onto a pool float. But a lifetime of consequences for not listening had made him very much in tune with that voice, and he immediately sat up, half-asleep.

Something was off, but he wasn’t sure what. It took him a moment to realize he was sitting on the floor, and was not curled up in bed. Across the room, in the other twin bed that had been in this room since they were children, Takashi sleepily lifted his head.

“Coming!” He called, running a hand through his hair and looking blearily around the room and yawning. His gaze came to rest on Kuro.

“…did you sleep on the floor?”

“Dude, you watched me climb into bed last night,” Kuro answered, his own voice just as rough with sleep as Takashi’s. “Why the fuck would I willingly decide to sleep on the floor? I fell.”

“Oh, check the attitude, Dr. McBitchy,” Takashi yawned again, kicking off the blankets and sitting up. “It’s not my fault you apparently decided to run a marathon in your sleep.”

“It’s not my fault. My bed at home is a queen, I’m used to having more room.”

“Takashi! Ryou!” Their names echoed through the house again.

“WE SAID WE’RE COMING!” Kuro screamed.

“DON’T USE THAT TONE OF VOICE WITH ME, RYOU!”

Kuro and Takashi both winced at the implied threat. Both of them knew they would never be too old to get their asses handed to them in this household, and quickly scrambled out of the bedroom to where they were summoned.

There were a lot of family photos on the walls, documentation of Kuro’s and Takashi’s achievements by proud parents. A smiling mother and father with two identical boys throughout the years, interspersed with framed medals and certificates. There were pictures of both Takashi and Kuro in their military uniforms, and of Takashi in his flight suit and Kuro in his medical scrubs. Academy and university graduation photos, photos from little league soccer, photos from judo classes and school field trips.

The quick trip through memory lane took them to the stairs, and as they thumped down to the first floor with all the grace of stampeding oxen they found Mrs. Shirogane waiting impatiently for them.

“Go help your grandmother and aunts with their bags, please,” she requested. “Your father is trying to carry everything in by himself and he won’t let me tell him about his back.”

“On it,” Takashi said dutifully.

Outside they found exactly the scene their mother had described and quickly intervened, stealing the luggage from Mr. Shirogane’s struggling arms and chastising him for not waking them up to help. Once he gave in and went inside, the two younger men were set upon with bone-crushing hugs and suffocating kisses by their grandmother and her sisters, who acted as if they hadn’t seen them in years despite the fact that both Shirogane twins returned to Japan with decent regularity. Having access to light spacecraft made monthly visits very easy.

In fact, Shiro had offered to pick them and their luggage up with his Lion and save them the hours-long plane ride, but the four old women had insisted that the journey itself was part of the trip.

Kuro suspected “journey” was code for “the alcohol and snacks are free in First Class,” but he knew better than to say that out loud.

When the women went inside and left the boys to the heavy lifting, Kuro glanced over at Takashi.

“Did you tell Sobo you were going to propose to Adam last night?”

“No, I didn’t want her to know unless he said yes,” Takashi admitted. “I’m going to tell them today.”

“They’re going to lose their minds. I can’t wait to see this.”

“Don’t enjoy it too much,” Takashi warned. “The second they know one of us is getting married they’re going to start asking when the other one will be bringing home a partner.”

“…okay,” Kuro stopped walking, the smile sliding off his face. “Maybe it’s not as funny as I thought it was.”

“That’s what I thought,” Takashi snorted.

They lugged the suitcases inside and upstairs, leaving some in the guest room where two of their great-aunts would be staying and bringing the rest into their childhood bedroom. Technically it was a second guest room, their things had long since been removed and the room redecorated, but it was hard to forget the ten years they’d shared the space before Takashi had been moved out of it to the other bedroom.

Still, despite the bit of nostalgia, Kuro knew he wouldn’t miss the room too much once they left Seattle and he went back to his nice, comfortable apartment in New Mexico. Takashi shared a home with his now-fiancé just a short trip away from the Garrison base where he still worked, and Kuro lived only forty-five minutes away from them in the next town over. His medical practice was based there, but he also did shifts at the hospital near Takashi and Adam, so he was never particularly lonely enough to desperately miss coming home to Washington.

He and Takashi packed up their overnight bags to get them out of the way. After they spent the morning with their grandmother and aunts they were going to head back over to Takashi’s place for Christmas. The Shiroganes didn’t celebrate as a whole, but the twins had grown up very Americanized and did.

“You’re coming to the memorial tonight, right?” Takashi asked as they finished packing.

“Yeah,” Kuro nodded. “It’s been a while since I saw all the kids. And I want to go tease Adam about being dumb enough to marry you.”

“You know, someday somebody will be dumb enough to want to marry you, and I won’t let you forget it.”

“Of course they will,” Kuro said airily, grabbing clean clothes for the day and his toothbrush, ready to lay claim to the guest bathroom first. “I’m a catch. You’re…you.”

He ducked the pillow that was thrown at his head fleeing the attack to grab a shower and get dressed for the day.

* * * * *

Curtis checked his mirror one last time, making sure nothing was out of place. His hair was still slightly damp from his shower, and the last thing he wanted was for it to curl up at the ends and dry that way, making him look ridiculous. When he was satisfied with what he saw, he slid his wallet into his pocket and headed downstairs to the kitchen.

Roxanne was seated there at the breakfast bar, three unopened bottles of wine at the ready and her first glass already half empty. Estelle was heating the leftovers they’d all brought from Christmas dinner at their parents’ house earlier, preparing for the very interesting evening the girls apparently had planned.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” Roxanne chirped, offering her glass. “At nine at night.”

“It’s barely seven in the morning on Altea,” Curtis defended, taking the glass and having a sip. “All I did was take a nap! I’ve been up all day and I have another, alien day ahead of me.”

“Whatever,” Roxanne murmured, taking her glass back. “I need clean towels.”

“So wash some,” Curtis advised. “This is my house, if you want room service then stay at a hotel.”

Bridgette came in then, ending what sounded like a work call she had taken despite being off today. She sat down next to Roxanne, who passed her an empty glass and tipped the open wine bottle into it.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll throw some towels in the washer while you’re gone,” she promised.

“Have yourself a party,” Curtis said indifferently. “Just don’t touch my stuff this time, all right? You’re a guest, not my maid.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to be a good guest!” Bridgette insisted. “Unlike some people.”

Roxanne snorted, not chastised in the least.

“What’s the point of having a baby brother if you can’t make him do your laundry?”

Curtis sighed and checked his watch. It was time for him to go, whether he trusted the three women to be drunk alone in his house or not.

“I’m leaving,” he announced, grabbing his keys. “Try not to set fire to the place while I’m gone. You know, again.”

The three of them chirped innocent responses, with Roxanne saying she made no promises, Estelle promising she’d try to keep Roxanne under control, and Bridgette wishing him good night. He let himself out into the chilly Christmas night, locking the door behind him and walking down to the end of the driveway to look up at the clear, starry sky.

He thought quietly about the events leading up to him being here, about being a student at the Garrison Academy and being recruited into Special Forces after graduation. He thought about his years running hostage missions and securing intel, and his eventual promotion to Bridge crew on Earth’s first interstellar warship.

Chaos and calamity, leading to this. The calm after the storm, a universe at peace. Decades of prosperity ahead, maybe centuries, for thousands of far-flung planets recently joined in a cultural and economic alliance.

And out of the trillions of years that the universe was theorized to live, he was alive during this tiny little window to see it.

He was there for about ten minutes before his view of the sky was interrupted by the approaching ship. The Blue Lion’s landing in the middle of the quiet residential street was so delicate Curtis swore he wouldn’t have noticed it land at all if he hadn’t been looking. After a moment of settling, her head lowered and her mouth opened to reveal Adam grinning down at him.

“I swear to God, you fly that thing like it’s part of your own body,” Curtis commented. “It’s more than a hundred tons, how do you not make noise on landing?’

“I’ve been flying it for years, remember,” Adam advised cheerfully. “Lots of practice.”

He stood up straight, raising one foot to rest on one of Blue’s bottom teeth, stabilizing himself with a hand on her top ones. He held out his free hand, making sure that the street lights glinted off something silver on the ring finger of his left hand.

“Notice anything different?”

It took Curtis a moment to realize what he was looking at. When he did, he felt a little sliver of shock run through him as he jumped up to board Blue, grabbing Adam’s hand so he could get a better look in her boarding lights.

“I can’t believe he had the spine to do it!” Curtis grinned, genuinely happy for Adam. “Wow, and it’s nice…not fancy or overdone, he knows your tastes. Did you tell him you were planning to propose to him on New Year’s Eve?”

“Nah,” Adam ushered Curtis up through the airlock. “Not yet. I figured I’d wait and give him his ring then, let him bask in his success for a week. You ready to roll? You left the lights on.”

“Yeah, my sisters are there,” Curtis assured him, bounding up the stairs and into the hold. He waited for Adam to go into the cockpit first before following him in, taking up his usual perch on the low storage cabinet slightly behind the pilot seat. “Bridgette managed to get extra time off last minute and there were no hotels available by then, I told her she could stay with me. Estelle and Roxanne decided that was enough of an excuse to not stay with Mom and Dad…the three of them are getting wine drunk and watching a Hallmark movie marathon.”

“Ah, back in a house with three older sisters,” Adam tsk’d as the Lion powered up. “Are you going to have flashbacks to when you were ten?”

“Already happening, my friend. Roxanne already threatened to tell Mom I wouldn’t give her the key to the cabinet with the good alcohol.”

Adam chuckled as Blue took off, lifting off just as quietly as she’d landed. She rose straight upward, toward the airspace over the Garrison base where the hourly wormhole would be opening soon.

“I’m glad you could make it to this,” he said sincerely. “I know you said you had a doctor’s appointment tomorrow and might not come.”

“I couldn’t miss seeing Coran,” Curtis admitted. “We send messages, but I haven’t talked to him in person since he quit crewing the Atlas to lead Altea. I moved my appointment up to yesterday.”

That gave Adam pause. He threw Blue onto autopilot and turned around in his seat, looking up at Curtis expectantly.

“…and?”

Curtis shrugged, trying to keep a straight face. He failed, one corner of his mouth curling up in a smile.

“And I’m officially cancer free.”

The noise Adam made was ungodly, and rather than behave like a man in his mid-twenties he immediately climbed over the back of his seat and tackled Curtis in a tight hug. They both fell off the cabinet and hit the floor, dissolving into laughter just as Blue hit her destination coordinates and stopped. Her monitor showed the Black Lion already waiting, her comms activating to bring up Keith’s face.

“Hey, you picked up Curtis?” Keith asked.

Adam untangled himself, sitting up on his knees and leaning over so he would be seen on his camera.

“Yeah, and guess what!?”

Over in the Black Lion, a delicate young female face shoved Keith out of the way as Selia excitedly took over her brother’s communications.

“Hi Curtis!” She said dreamily.

“Selia,” Keith grumbled in the background. “How many times do I have to tell you he’s ga—OW!”

Selia straightened up from kicking him in the shin, her infatuated smile returning.

“Hey poppet,” Curtis greeted politely, ignoring the noises Adam was making as he tried not to laugh. “Keith dropping you off at home?”

“No, I’m staying at a friend’s house on Altea while he’s at the memorial. What’s the news?”

“The chemo worked,” Curtis replied. “Clean bill of health.”

“That’s awesome!” This time it was Selia’s turn to hit the floor as Keith shoved her out of the way and reclaimed his spot, smiling brightly. “It’s the perfect Christmas present!”

“Did I hear that right?” Another voice came over the comms as the Red Lion drifted up to join them. Yellow and Green weren’t far behind.

“Congratulations, man!” Hunk enthused.

“Everyone will be super glad to hear it!” Pidge added happily.

Adam looked around at the gathered group, then checked the time on his console. He sighed, mildly exasperated.

“Where’s Takashi?”

“Not here yet,” Keith answered. “We thought he was with you.”

Adam muttered something under his breath and turned up the volume on one of the other comm channels, making sure he was heard loud and clear by his intended recipient.

“TAKASHI. We’re waiting for you!”

“I’m coming!” Shiro’s voice returned a moment later, flustered and rushed. “I got distracted!”

“I told you to turn off the cat videos as I was leaving! You said all you had to do was grab your boots and you’d meet me up here!”

“I know, but…I lied,” Shiro admitted. “It was a really good video.”

A moment later the White Lion rose up to join the rest, completing the full set of six. Curtis marveled at Shiro’s ability to be consistently running late for everything yet still arrive just in time, as the scheduled wormhole opened up to allow the short line of waiting ships passage. Normally a Lion was given priority to go first, but since the whole group was here they waited until everyone else was through before making the trip themselves.

As their turn came up the Lions went through as one, all of them together again for the first time since the end of the war.

* * * * *

It was a much smoother ride in a Lion than in the Atlas, the advanced inertia dampeners moving Blue through with barely even a tremor.

Altea appeared ahead of them, great and blue and beautiful, with its shimmering docking rings spinning lazily around it. Ships were coming and going, big and small, coming to do trade with the Jewel of Almadari, the travel hub of the Almadari solar system. The Lions, far more maneuverable and not here to do business, didn’t have to wait for permission to drop into the planet’s atmosphere. They also didn’t have to check in with air traffic control, thanks to their ability approach the planet over the sea and come in toward the castle at a low altitude.

The castle rose up in the distance, glittering in the morning sunlight as the Lions came to land on the private landing field behind the castle itself. The field jutted out into the ocean, away from the prying eyes of the public on the landlocked other side, allowing them to disembark in peace without being swarmed by curious onlookers.

Adam and Curtis took their time leaving the ship, as everyone milled around to greet one another and give overdue Christmas wishes. He watched Keith lay out the ground rules of staying overnight for Selia, doing his best not to smirk as the younger man’s I Hate Having A Sibling act dissolved.

He finally let her go, but as she went past Adam stopped her as well. Of course he trusted Keith to watch out for his little sister, but their families had been close his whole life and as the full-fledged adult here he still had to keep an eye out.

“You have a ride?” Adam asked sternly, well aware that Selia would omit the fact if she didn’t and then go wandering around Altea alone taking pictures.

“Yes!” She chirped. “Anithor and her mother are picking me up, they’re already out front.”

“Okay, have fun,” Adam dropped his arm, allowing her to pass. “Make sure you send your brother a message to let him know when you’re safely at her house.”

“I will!” Selia promised, running off toward the castle door that would lead her through the first floor and out front.

Across the field, Takashi and Kuro finally disembarked from the White Lion, carrying the gifts they’d been tasked with bringing for the people who they hadn’t seen yesterday. Adam felt a sharp elbow in his side as the two brothers left the Lion, intentionally jostling each other like a pair of ten-year-olds.

“Um,” Curtis said eloquently. Adam tried to figure out what was the matter.

“What?”

“There’s…two of them.”

“Yes?” Adam wasn’t sure why that was suddenly a problem. He looked at the confusion on Curtis’ face for a moment, and then it dawned on him.

A lot of people didn’t know Takashi had a brother. He and Kuro ran in very different circles, their lives didn’t always overlap.

“Oh, God!” Adam smacked himself in the forehead, realizing he’d never had any reason to talk about Kuro in Curtis’ presence. The slightly younger Shirogane’s existence was just a given to Adam, it never occurred to him that he might have to mention him to people. “Yes! They’re twins!”

“Shiro has a twin!?”

“Yes!” Adam said again. “Their pictures are all over the Garrison, you really didn’t know?”

“I never looked that close,” Curtis admitted. “I just thought they were all of Shiro.”

He pulled his gaze away from the two bickering men to look at Adam, but it only lasted a second before his eyes were sliding back over to them.

“…and that one does not look like any of those pictures.”

Adam followed Curtis’ stare. Takashi and Kuro were calming down and starting to distribute gifts to Hunk, Lance, and Pidge, and it was pretty blatant that Curtis’ assessment was correct. The pictures throughout the trophy cases in the Garrison were nearly identical, two young Japanese men in smart military uniforms, clean cut and well-presented.

But that was then, this was now, and those didn’t reflect the current reality. Kuro was dressed nicely today, to be sure, but unlike Takashi he had multiple piercings in his ears and one in an eyebrow. His suit jacket was draped over his arm and his shirt sleeves were rolled up, showing the full sleeve tattoo on one arm and the few smaller ones on the other. The front patch of his hair had also been bleached, and was currently dyed a neon yellow fading into hot pink.

“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “Kuro’s…colorful.”

“Kuro?”

Curtis scrunched up his nose slightly. Being a language expert meant he was fairly familiar with foreign names, and he knew that one didn’t fit.

“His actual name is Ryou, but he’s as formal about that as Takashi is and doesn’t let people outside his family use it,” Adam corrected himself. “They call him Kuro because he dived head first into his goth phase in grade school, and since everyone on their sports teams was starting to call Takashi “Shiro” they slapped Kuro with the opposite. I really never told you about him, huh?”

“No, that’s the kind of thing I would remember about your very-serious-boyfriend-now-turned-fiancé,” Curtis answered dryly. “He piloted for the Garrison?”

“He’s pilot-trained,” Adam confirmed. “But he decided to take the medic track instead. He was the Chief Medical Officer on the IHS _Benevolence_ during the war…pretty sure he did have to see combat as a pilot when they had to go through hostile space, but for the most part he was medical and rescue personnel.”

Curtis apparently wasn’t the only one who Kuro hadn’t been mentioned to, Takashi was currently introducing him to Lance, Hunk, and Pidge. Keith knew about him, of course, he’d been around Adam when both Takashi and Kuro had hung around together and had met him some time ago. As the twins stepped away from the other three Paladins, Kuro slung an arm around Keith and they all came over.

“It’s been a while since you came out on a field trip with us,” Adam noted, earning himself a snort form Kuro.

“Well, you two have been too busy to hang out for more than ten minutes for the last three months, so…”

“Yeah, sorry,” Takashi made a face. “But it’s been a year and all the publicity stuff is starting to die down, life should go back to normal soon. Well, as normal as it can be. I might start a weekly poker night or something.

“That would be nice, actually,” Kuro supposed. He was talking to Takashi but he was looking up at Curtis, more intrigued that Adam could remember ever seeing him. “Who’s your friend?”

Something in his tone made Adam look twice. Takashi clearly heard it as well, he looked over at his brother with an eyebrow raised.

“Oh, this is—”

Adam never got to finish. Curtis stepped in front of him, cutting him off and offering his hand.

“Curtis,” he said, with the stupidest smile on his face that Adam had ever seen. “Commander Curtis Duchesne.”

“Kuro.” Adam stood almost corrected, except the look on Kuro’s face wasn’t quite as dumb. “Dr. Kuro Shirogane. It’s nice to meet you, Commander.”

“Just Curtis is fine.”

“All right, Just Curtis.”

Adam rolled his eyes so hard he thought he felt a vein in his brain snap. He couldn’t stand here and watch this, he hooked Takashi’s arm and pulled him away. At first Takashi wouldn’t go, Adam had to give his arm a little twist to convince him otherwise.

“Is he hitting on my brother?” Takashi asked once they were a few yards away.

“They’re both grown men, let it be,” Adam advised. “Did you guys lock the door when you left?”

“Yes.”

“And made sure Chloe was in and had some dry food down?”

“Of course.”

“You didn’t leave anything on?”

“Babe,” Takashi sighed, reaching up to lightly grip Adam’s shoulders. “I ran a few minutes late because we were watching a video of two monkeys driving a puppy around in a Power Wheels, not because I suddenly forgot how to function. Everything is fine.”

Keith appeared then, looking just as put off by Kuro’s behavior as Takashi was by Curtis’.

“We’re all heading inside,” he informed them. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, of course,” Adam replied, doing one last check to make sure he had everything.

Takashi called Kuro over—it took him three times before Kuro actually complied—and Adam let the twins and Keith wander on ahead. He fell into step beside Curtis, whose eyes were still glued to Kuro as they entered the castle.

“Ruh-roh,” Adam murmured playfully, breaking Curtis out of his stare.

“What?”

“I’ve never seen you look at a man that way before,” Adam smirked. “I think he’s charmed you.”

“Oh, knock it off,” Curtis grumbled.

He was a man who swore by one-night-stands and brief hook-ups. If he could get away with it he referred to partners by a random feature instead of learning names, and he never saw the same man twice. He didn’t even like letting those partners spend the night at his place after a tryst, he preferred hotel rooms where he could walk out after it was over and never look back.

Adam had never commented on the way Curtis lived his life, because everything he did was consensual. If he happened to sleep with a married man here and there that was his business, he wasn’t breaking up relationships to start one of his own.

Curtis did not look at people like that. He was smooth and cocky, he did not get dumb and awkward. This was very new.

“Just so you know, the suit is an anomaly,” Adam clarified. “He’s got his own medical practice, but when he’s not at work he’s a fan of leather pants and tight shirts.”

The way Curtis’ eyes glazed over briefly at the mental image said it all. He always presented himself as the clean-cut gentleman in suits and ties, but his fetishes could make a porn star blush.

“Want his number?” Adam offered.

“No, I do not want his number,” Curtis scoffed.

Still trying to pretend like there was nothing out of the ordinary. Like he was uninterested, like he didn’t keep looking at the man walking ahead of him. They made it about five more steps before Curtis was pulling out his phone.

“Okay, give me his number,” Curtis relented. “I’m…I have a kind of scratching in my throat, I’m probably coming down with something…”

“Yeah, it’s called Horny,” Adam muttered, taking out his phone to bring up Kuro’s contact information. “I have to warn you though, he’s not the easy type you usually go for. He’s ace.”

Adam thought that would throw cold water on Curtis’ interest. He was wrong, which was even more surprising.

“Contrary to what you may believe, sex isn’t always the first thing I think about,” he said, mildly annoyed. Adam gave him a look, and he quickly backtracked. “Okay, a lot of the time it is, but sometimes it’s not.”

“Whatever. If you fuck this up, Takashi’s not going to be the one to kill you,” Adam warned. “Kuro will do it himself. Just saying.”

They reached the end of the hall they were in and were ushered into a small auditorium. He spotted some faces he already knew, like Romelle with Ziran and Acxa with her daughter Linelle. But there were also some faces he didn’t know, like a small handful of Galra officers who were quietly keeping to themselves toward the beck.

They were pointed to seats in the front row, but Adam and Takashi didn’t sit right away. They walked slowly past the stage, looking at the photos of the fallen displayed prominently in framed stands, draped in pink flowers and each labeled in elegant engraving; Princess Allura of Altea, Sasha Nikolaev of Earth, Emperor Lotor of Daibazaal. The reasons for this small, somewhat private ceremony for close friends, taking place before the happier festivities celebrating the end of the war.

Adam followed Takashi to the far end of the stage, where their two Altean hosts stood quietly talking.

“Queen Honerva,” Takashi greeted politely, bowing his head slightly before smiling. “Prime Minister Smythe.”

Coran smiled brightly at the title, puffing up proudly. He took pride in his place in Altea’s future, as he should.

“Admiral Shirogane,” Honerva returned the greeting with a little smile of her own. “Dr. Lobo-Mendez. I’m glad you both could come. But the “Queen” is only an honorary title, and you’ve done too much for me to owe me that kind of respect. Honerva is fine.”

“It’s been too long!” Coran said brightly, shaking their hands with an enthusiasm that a year of separation hadn’t dulled. “I’m glad you’re all here!”

“It’s the one-year anniversary of the Almadari system’s return from the dead, we couldn’t miss it,” Adam replied. “It’s not every day an entire system of destroyed planets reappears with all of its original inhabitants intact.”

“I just wish this morning was as happy as the rest of the day is going to be,” Takashi lamented, looking back at the photos.

“Lotor had a very long, very active life,” Honerva said softly. “He lived to see the beginnings of peace return to the universe, and he understood that death was an inescapable part of war. He would not want his passing to be mourned.”

“Allura would feel the same,” Coran agreed solemnly. “All she ever wanted was happiness for her people, and she did what she had to do to ensure that happened. We’re here to celebrate the lives that were, not dwell on the end of them.”

“I can’t help but think Nikolaev would agree,” Adam murmured. “He always seemed like the kind of guy who accepted whatever happened with a shrug and an “oh well.”

There was a bit of noise at the door, not much but just enough to draw their attention to some new arrivals. A tall, stately Galra entered the room, flanked by two lower officers, pausing at the stage to show his respect with a brief moment of silence before coming to join them. He caught sight of Keith on his way, giving him a nod in response to the Paladin’s small wave.

“Emperor Thace,” Coran greeted respectfully.

“I apologize for my lateness,” Thace was well-spoken, with a powerful presence, but still a bit awkward in spite of having held his current position for almost a year. “The Galra transition from a fascist regime to an honest government has had its share of problems, I had to see to some of them this morning.”

“We’re just glad you made it,” Takashi assured him. “From what Keith tells us, you’re making great progress.”

“The Blade is doing its best to dismantle the monarchy from within, but it will be some generations yet before the Galra are ready to let it go and embrace a more democratic rule the way Altea has,” Thace admitted. “We’re fortunate that the former Empress understands both cultures well enough to advise us, it’s helped greatly.”

“To see Daibazaal restored to its former glory will be my greatest honor,” Honerva murmured.

Coran glanced out at the crowd and then checked his watch, taking a deep breath and smoothing down his uniform.

“It’s only a small group for this service, almost everyone is here,” he advised. “We should get ready to start.”

Thace nodded and excused himself, he and the two officers going to join the other Galra. Takashi and Adam went back to the others to sit down, taking the seats being held for them by Keith since Curtis had pretty much blocked Kuro in on the end and commandeered his attention.

Adam looked up at the photos, smiling faces captured in rare moments of peace during the war. Lives cut short, the very expensive price paid for the freedom the universe had received.

Coran stepped up on the stage and started to speak, and Adam rested his head against Takashi’s shoulder to listen.

* * * * *

Altea’s sky didn’t have quite the same pollution in its atmosphere, so the sunset here wasn’t painted in shades of red and gold. The mercantile rings that drifted high up in the sky created a field of their own that reacted similarly to the planet’s magnetic field, making a rainbow of green and blue auroras dance over the heads of the group.

Dinner had been amazing, as expected, thanks to Hunk sharing the plethora of recipes he’d gathered from across the galaxies with the Altean chefs preparing the meal, and in contrast to the winter weather in their hemisphere back at home the evening was warm and comfortable.

“I mean, seriously though,” Pidge was saying as Shiro thanked the young woman who was refilling his wine glass and returned his attention to the conversation. “Earth has come a long way. It’s a hub for all alien activity in our quadrant of the galaxy now that my dad’s stabilized the teludav technology.”

“The uptick in commercial vessels coming and going has been noticeable,” Shiro agreed. “Soon we won’t need to rely on having an Altean on the ground and we’ll be able to open wormholes to more systems than just this one, we’ll be able to reach so many more sectors with the improved mobility. Not to mention the supplies we’ll save with shorter trips.”

“Which is nice,” Hunk supposed, grabbing one last mouthful from his plate before letting a server take it, “but I feel like my work’s going to triple. With the teludavs running full time I won’t have any excuses to put off all these meetings anymore. I’ll have one like every other day, this diplomacy thing is not as easy as Allura made it look.”

“Right?” Keith snorted. “But then, she did make everything look easy.”

“Speaking of diplomacy,” Shiro looked over at Keith. “Things sound like they’re going well on Daibazaal.”

“Yeah, they are,” Keith nodded. “Tomorrow we’re calling for an election to select a representative for the Galaxy Alliance, so that’s a step in the right direction. Thace is hoping that getting started by electing lower officials will help get the Galra comfortable with the idea of choosing their own government instead of being ruled over.”

“You forgot the best part,” Lance grinned, elbowing his boyfriend lightly. “Keith’s mom asked him to run as a candidate to be that representative. Keith said no, of course.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Keith looked down at his mostly empty glass in mild embarrassment. “I think we all know being a politician would be a disaster for me. Hunk’s the man with the magic touch for that kind of thing.”

“I think Allura would be proud of your decision, Keith,” Coran praised. “I think she always knew you would play a part in the Galra’s future, and helping the Blade maneuver Thace onto the throne is a big step toward setting Daibazaal free from its past. She would definitely approve.”

“Oh, hey, been meaning to ask,” Hunk piped up, turning to Adam. “How are things going over on Nalquod? It must’ve been a mess for them all to suddenly wake up after ten thousand years and realize they don’t have a leader.”

“Not really,” Adam gave a faint shrug. “The Nalquodians seem to be a lot more fluid in their idea of leadership than the other planets, succession is by appointment not birth. There…really wasn’t much friction there at all. Aside from the shock at finding out their king and queen were long dead and the officers in line had to take over, life’s gone on as usual.”

“Adam’s family was able to go back there, though,” Shiro added. “As it turns out, the Nixa were never historically seen as monsters or enemies. They have a small nation state made up of islands in the planet’s eastern ocean where they can hunt big game without being bothered.”

“Yeah, it’s actually really nice, to find out that all the bad things we thought we knew were just Empire propaganda to get people to hunt us down,” Adam grinned, picking up his glass and swirling the remains of his wine. “And now my family has a huge stretch of islands to migrate between instead of having to planet-hop. Sophia has a summer house on the beach there, she loves it. I could never live there, though. They don’t even have Prada.”

There were several eye rolls at that, but Adam had never particularly cared what people thought of him. He came from money, a lot of money, but Shiro knew him well enough to know he was very self-aware about being wealthy and the advantages it afforded him. He just liked what he liked on his occasional splurges, and he liked designer. Nalquod didn’t have his brands of designer.

“And Katie,” Adam asked, leaning back in his chair. “Sam said something about your grandmother going back to the Dalterion Belt a few months ago?”

“She did!” Pidge answered. “It’s where her mother’s ancestors originally came from, and she wanted to see it with her own eyes. She sends me pictures all the time and calls me every week, Matt and I are going to go stay with her this summer. Hunk’s coming too.”

“Yeah! Coran reached out to Gyrgan’s tribe on Rygnirath,” Hunk added. “They want to meet the guy who inherited their leader’s Lion. It’s gonna be so cool to learn more about his last pilot’s history.”

Servers had been quietly stealing dishes from under their noses as they talked, and with the table almost empty Coran took out his watch and checked it.

“Oh, it’s very late,” he noted, looking around the table. Smiling, he picked up his glass and stood. “With the time differences, I know some of you have had extremely long days today and probably want to rest. I’m glad that everyone is here today, to remember Allura and share the new joys of the solar system she loved. Just around this table, I see so many lives touched by her actions. For some of us she was a diplomat, a teacher, a leader, and a friend. But to those of us around this table, she will always be family. To Allura.”

“To Allura,” Shiro repeated along with the others, raising his glass and draining it.

“And now, the poor staff we’re also keeping far too late would like us out of the way so they can clean up and go home. I know you’ve already been shown your usual accommodations but remember, if there’s anything you need, let me know.”

They all rose and stretched, moving out of the way so the servers could get to work, pausing to give Coran hugs or handshakes before they started to meander back down the hill and around the side of the castle. The private guest quarters were a row of small suites lining the back of the castle, facing the landing field and the ocean, a warm breeze blowing in from the sea as they split up to go their separate ways.

Adam nudged Shiro while he was unlocking their door and gestured to the edge of the landing field. Shiro looked and saw that Curtis and Ryou were still awake, standing over by the water’s edge. Curtis said something they couldn’t hear from here and Ryou laughed, giving him a playful shove.

“Those two together are a bad idea,” Shiro murmured, shaking his head and opening the door.

“For them, or for us?” Adam asked.

“For the universe.”

It was a tornado meeting a tsunami, that was for sure. But to be fair, many people had said the same thing about Adam and himself when they’d first met, and no permanent property damage had come of it.

Shiro stepped aside to let Adam go inside first and glanced out at the two men by the water again. He only knew Curtis in a professional capacity, as part of his previous bridge crew on the Atlas, and as a friend of Adam’s since their parents moved in the same wealthy circles. Curtis had always kept things on the bridge professional and made himself scarce in casual settings when Shiro was around, though Adam assured him it was nothing personal.

Ryou looked like he was having a good time at least, which was good. He’d become somewhat of a hermit since a big break-up he’d gone through about five years ago, to see him being social outside of the family was nice.

Shiro left them be rather than giving in to the urge to go over and tease, following Adam inside to finally settle in and relax. It had been an extremely long, extended day, and sleep was calling his name.

* * * * *

The room was quiet and dark, which was just how Lance liked it at night. He’d forgotten his sleep mask at home, so the lack of light in this area mixed with the warm sea breeze were the perfect lullaby for a tired young man. It didn’t hurt that Keith was here, either; they usually arranged to share a dorm room while on campus but had different living arrangements during breaks, and Lance hadn’t spent a night snuggled up against Keith’s back since the beginning of December.

But even if he hadn’t forgotten his sleep mask, it was a noise that first woke him in the small hours of the morning. Low and rumbling, the unmistakable sound of the Lions.

They were ships, nothing more and nothing less, but would only react to the energies of specific people. The Paladins now knew the Lions were reacting directly to their specific quintessence, but in the beginning, before any of them had even known the word, it had been a difficult thing to figure out. Lance knew from experience that the Lions made some interesting, almost life-like sounds, but it was only ever in response to the mood or state of their pilots.

He did not know what was going on this early in the morning that any of the Lions would be reacting to them, and his automatic reaction was to lift his head and sleepily check Keith. But Keith was doing the same, sitting up slightly to look back at him and see if he was all right.

“Did you hear that?” Lance asked with a yawn.

“Yeah. You okay?”

“Fine. You?”

“Fine.”

The sound came again, deep enough to vibrate through his chest, and this time it was accompanied by an unexpected light. Not bright enough to blind, but there was definitely something illuminating the field outside. Lance kicked off the sheet around his legs, and Keith was right behind him as he jogged across the suite and pulled the door open to look out. Across the landing field, where the Lions had once been scattered where they’d landed, the ships were now all in a circle facing the center.

“What the hell?”

Lance glanced over at Keith, who was staring at the scene as well. Down the row of suites other doors were opening and Paladins were coming out, so Lance knew they weren’t crazy. The light was coming from the eyes of the Lions, glowing softly as the ships were activated seemingly of their own accord.

A short distance from the suite entrances, on a patch of grass, Kuro and Curtis were also waking up from where they’d apparently fallen asleep on a blanket, probably stargazing. There was no point in asking them what was going on then, they’d clearly slept through it too.

Shiro was the first one to really react, shaking off his surprise to stride forward toward the circle of ships. Adam was right on his heels, and after a quick look to Keith and a nod in return, they followed. Everyone moved into a group, curiously making their way between the hulking forms of the White and Blue Lions to stop in the middle of the circle.

“What are they doing?” Hunk asked, his confusion mirroring Lance’s own.

“How are they doing it?” Pidge added.

Lance wasn’t sure, and apparently neither was anyone else. He broke away from the group and walked toward Red, who was doing nothing except for sitting there with her power obviously running. Which simply shouldn’t be possible, because as they’d already discovered, he was the only one who could activate this particular ship.

He sensed the others moving as well, heading toward their own Lions to see what was going on. But there was nothing amiss, nobody else was out here on the landing field but them. Lance gave a huff and put his hands on his hips, looking up at the Lion in front of him, wondering if they should be worried about some kind of new hacking initiative or something.

The glow in Red’s eyes abruptly grew brighter, so bright Lance had to throw an arm up over his face to shield his eyes. The whole field was flooded with light, and he heard the exclamations of surprise coming from all the others.

But besides that he heard something else; a command so soft it must have been whispered, but that felt like it carried the weight of the entire universe behind it.

_It’s time for you all to remember._


End file.
